


Kingsman: A Trainee's Mission

by Aud_McCartney



Series: Kingsman: A Fanwork Archive [1]
Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: (I leave it vague on purpose so you can take or leave the crossover aspect), (P.S. my headcanon is that Peggy Carter of SHIELD & Angie Martinelli are Harry's moms), (but that is the tea in my brain), Gen, Prequel, and I wrote this as the start of their friendship but tbh, it could be the start of a relationship too - it works whichever way you see them, so Merlahads welcome, when Harry met Merlin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-16 15:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14813924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aud_McCartney/pseuds/Aud_McCartney
Summary: The year is 1981. Welcome to Kingsman....





	1. Fall In

**Author's Note:**

> Ignores TGC's two-second mention of my soft boy Harry having ever been in the army, because I already had my own ideas about his backstory way before that, so whoops, I accidentally disregarded canon, imagine that. Also disregards any backstory from the novelizations. IT'S MY WORLD AND I LIKE IT

“Fall in.”

They’re the words he’s been waiting for. Hands behind his back, Harry steps into line with the fifteen other proposals. A subtle glance over his shoulder takes stock of them. Some look to have come to life from the brochures of Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds. Others look prepared for a rock-&-roll concert on a quad somewhere. He wonders which will be his future colleague.

The old man who gave the order, ruddy and silver-white haired, sporting elbow-patched tweed, comes two paces forward. He adjusts his black-rimmed glasses, folding his arms over his burdened clipboard.

“Gentlemen. My name is Arthur,” he begins. “I welcome you to the interview process; very likely the most extreme interview process in the world. Have no doubt of that.” Pausing, he lightly clears his throat. “Now, ordinarily, as per the Kingsman tradition, these trials are overseen by our resident Merlin.”

 _Merlin the Wizard_ , Harry thinks. _Tech wizard. The agents’ handler_. His smile is hard to repress.

“However. Circumstances being as they are, may our dear friend rest in peace, I will be testing the lot of you myself.”

In the back row, there’s the faintest snort, and fainter muttering; Harry picks up something to the effect of how this ought to be cake, then. Arthur’s caught it as well. He levels a halfheartedly-scathing gaze, but moves along.

“If you’ve taken notice of your company, which I hope to God will never again need be _asked_ of you, you will have counted sixteen applicants in this room. On this rare occasion, we are seeking to fill _two_ positions. The very same incident that claimed the life of our Merlin has also laid to rest our dearly missed Agent Galahad.” The old man studies them, his eyes demanding postures of stone. “If any of you are perturbed by the possibility of someday greeting the same fate, this moment will be your final chance to leave.”

Harry waits, still as a pond. Nobody moves.

One brusque nod from Arthur. “Good. In that case, I look forward to finding out which two of you, and _only_ two of you, will become the newest members of Kingsman. I wish a great deal of luck to you all.”

 _Hardly necessary_ , Harry thinks.

“Now then.” Arthur’s pen points out the perimeter of the room in a slow circle, and the candidates’ eyes follow. Against the walls are bunks beds, four to the left, four to the right, a metre or so between each. “In a moment, you will go and find your name on an index card attached to one of these bunks. These designate your assigned sleeping arrangements. On your cot, you will find one of these.” He points his pen at the nearest lower bunk, sporting a lump of thick canvas. “Can anyone identify this item?”

Ten or so hands go up. Arthur lights on the nebbish thing to Harry’s immediate right, already sweating through his ill-fitting sport coat.

“It’s a sleeping bag, sir?”

Snickers blossom around the error. _You twit, it’s a body bag_.

“It’s a body bag,” says Arthur. “Lyle, isn’t it?”

Lyle gives a quivering nod, Adam’s apple plunging. Arthur makes a note. _Well he’ll be gone by the week-end._

“At your station, you will write your name on the bag provided. You will also write the names of any and all next-of-kin. This represents your acknowledgement of the extraordinary risk you are about to face, as well as your very binding agreement to our incredibly strict confidentiality policy. It is your contract. Should you break this contract at any time, I regret to say, and hope you understand, that the names on your bag will henceforth, and without fail, become its inhabitants.” _Like the army, then. I’ve read about this_. “Have I made myself clear?”

Fifteen heads bob. The outlier is at the far end of Harry’s row. He’s a slight thing with a close haircut, wearing a coat of blue and green tartan plaid. From the look of him, he can’t possibly be out of secondary school. His arm is raised.

So is Arthur’s eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Isn’t that an army technique, sir?” The question comes in a Scot’s brogue.

“Beg pardon?”

“The army. God save the Queen.” Even with his eyes forward again, Harry can hear repressed amusement in the words, albeit not repressed very hard. “Is it not typical for army recruits to be given the same exercise as a scare tactic?”

A look passes Arthur’s face that suggests how very much done he is with all of them. The young man goes without an answer, not that he seemed to be too seriously curious in the first place. Arthur pokes the bridge of his glasses, turning away.

“Fall out.”

Harry waits until he’s gone, then sets himself upon the nearest bunks with the famished eyes of a wild man.

His name isn’t on the first frame, so he moves left. It isn’t on the second, third, fourth, or fifth, either. It’s on the sixth. Only his card is there; his bunkmate’s has already been removed, leaving behind a bent thumbtack.

“Hope you don’t mind I had my heart set on the top bunk,” comes the brogue.

Harry looks up, only to retrace his visual steps as the young man above him hops back to solid ground. A grin comes over him— _Yes, this will do fine, I’m sure this will be interesting_ —and he proffers his hand. His fellow recruit accepts, and he shakes enthusiastically.

“Harry Hart.”

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

The silence that follows outlasts the handshake. Harry blinks. He chalks the missed cue up to possible excitement or nerves, at least until his companion turns away with an amicable nod, retrieving his body bag like nothing else is happening.

“Aren’t you going to tell me your name?” Harry asks.

The thought must be genuinely foreign to the lad, going by the way his brow serpentines. “Why would I do that?”

 _Why on earth would you ask a thing like that?_ “I…well, I told you mine.”

“Yes, and I appreciated that. It’s very pretty. I like alliteration.”

Harry follows him around the other side of the bunks as he goes about searching for a pen, utterly bewildered to be having this conversation. “So you aren’t going to tell me yours? That doesn’t seem very fair. How should I know what I’m meant to call you?”

“When you think about it, do you really have to call me anything at all?” He pulls the cap off a felt marker. “I’ll know it’s me you’re talking to if you’re looking at me. It’s a basic measure of respect, eye contact. Very valuable in many situations.”

“Oh, come now, don’t be ridiculous.” Harry’s tone is still brightly convivial, which he’s rather proud of, considering he’s rapidly approaching a state of active frustration. “Just tell me your name.”

“All right, fine,” the other one exhales. “You can call me Merlin, if you like.”

 _Merlin_. “Merlin.”

“Yes.”

It’s too preposterous to abide. “But you don’t know that you’ll get the position! You’re no more Merlin at this point than anyone else in this room.”

The young man flips a shoulder, looking blasé. “It’s only a matter of time. And it’s not like the last one’s still using it. He’s dead, what does he care? Seems up for grabs to me.”

The marker squeaks across the cardstock on the body bag. Harry attempts to read over his bunkmate’s shoulder, but the stubborn little shit’s concealing it from him. “You’re certainly quite confident, aren’t you?”

“Well, I don’t like to brag.”

“Please, now, come on, I insist you give me something to call you other than Merlin. What if one of us gets a position and the other doesn’t? I’d like to think we may be friends by the end of this; how will I keep in touch with you?”

Would-Be Merlin chuckles to himself, not unkindly replying, “If one of us gets a position and the other doesn’t, something tells me there won’t be any keeping in touch. Matter of fact, the loser may be unlikely to remember _any_ of this. Have you seen those amnesia darts yet?”

“Oh yes, they’re brilliant.” Briefly he feels the thrill of this afternoon again. Hundreds of gadgets, dozens of all manner of vehicles, all hidden below the earth while regular people go about their lives, walking dogs, pushing prams, shopping at Tesco… He shakes his head. “That’s not the point.”

“All right, all right. You can call me…M.”

 _M_.

“M. M, as in, M from the James Bond films?”

“Yes. M as in M from the James Bond films.” He caps the marker, holding it out. “If you wanna use this, I’m all through with it.”

Harry takes it, but makes no move toward his bag. He stares at M-Not-Merlin for a few moments, standing there as unmoved as he is, squared off with him. Unblinking. Assured. Something calmly challenging in it, almost. And his body bag over his arm with the card on front obscured conveniently to the underside.

The conclusion’s a slap in the skull he should’ve picked up minutes ago. “You really can’t stand your name whatsoever, can you?”

“No. No I can’t.”

His grin returns for having won the prize. He walks around him. “If it’s all that traumatic of an embarrassment for you, why not go by something else?” His palm braces the index card for writing on. “Or have it changed entirely, for that matter. I’m sure it couldn’t be very complicated.”

“Oh, couldn’t it, then?”

“Ah. So you’ve thought of that.”

“More than once, believe you me. It’d kill my auntie.” The lad’s climbing back up the ladder now, the frame creaking after him. “Raised me from a boy, that woman did. Christ knows why she loves the hideous thing, but it’s a family name.” He parks himself at the foot of his cot, legs swaying just slightly. “So I’m a bit stuck with it, y’see.”

“Yes, I do.”

Tilting his head, Harry admires the careful scrawl of his mothers’ names. Contrary to frightening him, he almost wishes he could cut out this patch and frame it, along with perhaps mailing them a copy. _Imagine how a thing like this would look next to my nursery school handprints_.

“Well then.” He, too, smoothly folds his bag, cheerful as he looks up. “I suppose M is as good as anything. Lovely to meet you, M.”

“Much appreciated. And likewise.”

Harry extends the marker. “You can have this back now. Thank you very kindly.”

“Oh, no skin off mine.” M points to bunk seven. “It’s his.”

Perspiring Lyle is flitting around the bunk adjacent, upending his toiletry kit, quite plainly frantic. It’s difficult to contain a laugh as Harry taps the poor sod on the shoulder with a “Pardon me,” then slips the marker into his clammy hand. “Take this one. All finished.”

The relief from the poor thing just about rattles the woodwork. “Oh—oh good, thank you. Thanks very much.”

“Not at all. Happy to help,” M contributes.

 _Good God, it’s a toss-up who’s the cheekier shit between the two of us_. “Come on.” It’s time to get out of here before their neighbor wonders what’s funny. “Let’s go and find out where to hand these in, shall we?”

M hops down again with a grunt. “Every time I sit down.”

The body bags go in a heap on a table in the corner. Once there, Harry watches with some mild degree of amazement as M begins to separate them, unasked, glancing only fleetingly at each card, sorting out a new pile by alphabet.

He makes a mental note to get to know M better in the coming days. Already, it seems the wisest investment in the room.

 


	2. The Flooded Room

Harry is awash in warm sunlight, sitting on the stone bench in the lily garden behind his mothers’ brownstone. The air is lovely here. Fragrant. Full of floating wisps and specks of this and that. His eyes follow a delicate friend as it comes in for a soft landing beside his resting hand. Not a monarch. _Limenitis Archippus_. The viceroy butterfly. It’s only a shame that it starts to rain.

From underneath.

 _That’s odd_ …

Groundwater soaks his feet, trousers, shirt…

Bedclothes…

The garden is a barracks; he’s bolt upright, thrashing free of sodden coverings, splashing to his feet in waist-high water. Without another thought, he’s halfway up the ladder.

“Get up! Wake up!”

M had already stirred. By the time he’s blinked himself properly conscious, Harry’s standing on the foot end of M’s bunk, looking down at the flood that’s claimed a metre of the room. Nearing two, and quickly.

“Hey, hold on now, what the hell are you–”

He points at the water. “ _That_ , will you look down!? _That!_ ” _There must be something wrong. The doors are sealed or else the water would escape into the corridor. They wouldn’t be sealed if anyone anticipated a thing like this_. The last of the overhead lights flick to life; exclamations of alarm come from all around them.

“Oh, _fuck_ no.” M’s looking over the side now, and just as quickly, he’s on his feet beside Harry, bracing himself with a hand on the ceiling. “What the fuck is this!?”

“How the hell should _I_ know!?” _Something has to be wrong. A pipe’s burst. Jesus, doesn’t anyone know a pipe’s burst? Arthur? Someone?_ The thumbtacks in the bed frame disappear below the waterline. “Someone’s got to do something!”

“I’ll say! This is _my_ high ground; you go get your own,” M insists.

“Oh, and where _exactly_ do you propose–”

Harry breaks off his own sentence, whipping around as the unnerving siren of shrieks from the next bunk over finally breaks through his subconscious. Lyle, treading in place, hollering in blind panic, over and over, again and again. It suddenly registers he’s been doing it since the lights went on.

“For _fuck’s sake_.” The water’s up to M’s cot now. Bounding in, Harry paddles to the next bed and snatches Lyle by the lapels, throttling him once to utter failure before cracking a crisp slap across his face. “Stop that! Are you a man, or a fucking ambulance? Get ahold of yourself!”

“Hell, I wanted to do that.”

“Th-th-th-th-the door, the door’s locked, it’s locked, we’re all gonna drown!” Lyle sputters.

“No one is going to drown!” _Jesus Christ, what if we all drown, what if they fucking drown us?_ They’re in up to their necks now, the floor pulling farther away beneath bicycling feet. The ceiling is too close.

“Try slapping him again,” M votes.

Wet hair flies from Harry’s forehead as he quickly scopes the room. No one else is doing anything. They’re all standing on the top bunks, two or three attempting to bail water, others banging on wall panels trying to spring a leak. One’s swum down to try and open the floor drain beneath the showers, and it isn’t working. Harry presses the ceiling. _Showers. Breathing tubes. Oxygen_.

“Everyone! Listen to me!” They’re looking. He cranes his face above the water. “No one panic! If we pair off and disconnect the showerheads–”

The final plunge shuts his eyes on reflex. He forces them back open, blinking several times against the sting of chlorine. His unprepared limbs pinwheel for a moment; when they stop, someone else’s are making strokes in front of him. It’s M. Harry watches him swim to the row of bunks across the room, grabbing the first shoulder he encounters, then the second. He watches him point toward the showers.

_Yes. Yes! He’s understood!_

Harry wastes no time. He pivots, gliding through the water toward bunk five, dragging helpless Lyle behind him. One-handedness is getting him nowhere; he releases Lyle near the next two recruits and points the way for all three of them. Bunk four is watching, and Harry curls his hand around his mouth, miming a deep breath. They understand. Five, now, turn and swim for the wash-up station. He twists around and checks the other side. M has eight, no, nine of them convinced to follow him. In a few broad kicks, M has his hands around the neck of a showerhead.

Harry swims, pulling away through sterile blue. Bubbles scatter from the metal necks of pipes as the first hose is yanked free, then the second, then four more, then two. Eight showers. Sixteen recruits. He wonders how to remind them to pair off and share the air supply, until M pats the shoulders of bunk two, both of them, and shoves them toward the same steel toilet.

_It's working!_

Under M’s arm is the tube he’s wrested for himself and Harry. He’s locked on him now, waving him over. Four of the toilets are claimed.

Floating for a moment, he adjusts his posture, extending a finger left. _That one, over there. Meet me_. He propels himself toward it. Only moments from another breath. God, how needed it is. _All of this for a trial. It has to be a trial, doesn’t it? I certainly hope they’re bloody satisfied_ …

Harry’s eyes bulge.

… _with what they see_.

Arthur is watching. Water would compromise the cameras. He’s somewhere else.

M is jamming the hose through the loo bend when he sees it. The lights, still working somehow, glinting off the silver casing. Reflecting in the mirror.

 _The mirror_.

His lungs prickle heinously under their duress, but Harry ignores them with every corner of his mind, all the might available to his body. He draws his arms and knees in close, then bursts away in a monumentous breast stroke. His peripheral clocks M giving him the look of a century. There’s no time to explain.

Banking off the wash-up station, he collects one of the hoses’ discarded heads from the submerged tile. It’s a barbell in his hand. _Good_. The mirror is five paces away. Five strokes. Three. One. For leverage, he wraps his empty hand around a faucet.

His arm rears back. It burns to pull forward, but he does, as hard as he can. Bashing the handle against the glass. A hair of fracture appears. He rears back again.

Fifteen heads, thirty eyes, follow his arm as if he’s gone mad. Mental. He ignores every last one of their reflections. His lungs convulse.

 _Come on_ …

The second bash does nothing. The third only turns the hairline fracture to a spider web, making a kaleidoscope of the room, of his own strained face growling back at him.

It’s the fourth that sucks them all to hell.

His hand goes through the glass, and then he’s tumbling, his spine lurched forward in the burbling rush, limbs hitting him, foam roaring in his ears. His back meets cold cement before he knows which direction is up. It’s certainly one way to find out.

 _Fuck_. The sound of ragged coughing pounds through his skull for several moments before he realizes it’s coming from himself. And all around him. Squinting, he finds the others strewn about the floor on all sides, tangled into piles of human being, nightclothes plastered to their skin. Gasping. Some wheezing. Others picking glass shards from their palms.

He doesn’t see Arthur until the man steps forward.

“Excellently done,” he declares. “That was quite impressive. With exceptions.” Pointedly, his gaze finds the screamer. “Lyle. Pack your things. And congratulations on setting a new Kingsman record: earliest departure.”

Dejected, Lyle stands, plodding in the direction of the door. Harry exchanges a look with M in the moment before Arthur speaks again.

“As for the rest of you. A victory this may be, but only by the skin of your teeth. As far as I’m concerned, you have Harry to thank for reminding you all of the golden rule. That a true Kingsman works in tandem with his fellow agents.”

Harry blinks. Then grins. For the second time in three minutes, he feels every eyeball in the room on him—only this time, he might like getting used to it.

“If it suits you, I would consider thanking him for your air supply. Fortunately, you’ve all shown that you can take direction, as well, which saves a bit of time for me.” Arthur makes a few notes on his clipboard. “You all pass. A word of advice: do not get comfortable. Tomorrow, the real work begins.” Then he opens the observatory door. “Back to bed with all of you. Fall out.”

He’s gone before any of them can ask how the fuck he proposes that. Every head swivels to the shattered mirror, the waterlogged room beyond—and the industrial thermal heating units glowing in the center of the room, the ones that’d looked like ordinary columns an hour ago. Already the puddles are shrunk by half, steam evaporating from the bedclothes, heatwaves making mirages in their vision.

 _Well then_.

All of them stand to leave, filing raggedly into the hall. All of them save for two. Harry stays, hands planted behind him on the floor, still catching his breath. Between calves, he sees that M’s not budging, either.

He’s staring, in fact. At him. It goes on for such a bloated moment that he’s tempted to ask what the problem is. Perhaps he’s bleeding from the head.

Then M leans forward, extending a formal right hand.

“Hamish Mulcahy,” he says.

A full-size cab could park on Harry’s grin. They shake.

“Harry Hart.”

“Yeah. I know.”

 


	3. Choose Your Puppy

At six a.m. sharp, Harry has already been awake for precisely a quarter hour. He’s done a full stretch routine, made up his bunk, and by the time the piped-in sound of Big Ben’s gong resonates to wake the others, he’s on his way back from the sinks, swinging his toothbrush in a plastic sandwich bag.

“Fucking Christ.” Punctuating himself with a yawn to rival any zoo lion, Hamish leaps directly to the floor, apparently no fan of the concept of ladders. “I love waking up like I slept under a bridge in fucking Westminster.”

“Could be worse,” Harry poses. “I was anticipating a bugle, myself.”

“Oh, no, you’re right, that’d definitely be worse.”

“See? Perspective will get you everywhere.”

Then Hamish scrutinizes him. “How long’ve you been up and about, anyway?”

“Oh, only a bit.” Experience has taught him specifics can be obnoxious; he’s got to save _something_ for later. “Habit, honestly.”

“I see. Can I ask a question?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“You’re one of those irritatingly overprepared types, aren’t you?”

“Quite, yes.”

Hamish’s brow does a hop. “Fair enough. At least you’re forward about it.”

He takes that as a compliment. “Thank you.”

They seem to notice the parcels at the same time. There are two of them stacked at the foot of every lower bunk, each one a thick square of material resembling Burberry, folded crisply, bundled up with twine.

Hamish cuts the strings with a scouts’ knife from his pocket— _Did you sleep the whole night with that there?_ —and each of them take possession of the article with their initials on the tag, holding them out. They fall away into jumpsuits. That’s what they are. Collared, belted jumpsuits. Harry’s in a khaki color, and Hamish’s in some sort of teal.

“We must be meant to put these on.” Logic quickly replaces his momentary pang of disappointment. Surely it’d be impossible to train properly in a full Kingsman Tailors’ bespoke suit. They must get those later. These will more than do for the time being.

He retreats to the corner to change while Hamish is still inspecting both sides of his garment. “Fetching. I’m just looking for the nappies that go with it.”

“Oh, come on, now, it’s not all that bad.”

“More perspective?”

Harry expertly buttons his way up the row, grinning in advance at his own wit. “Enticement, actually. The sooner you’ve got it on, the sooner I can procure blackmail photos.”

“Over my dead body.”

“How convenient; you’ve already got somewhere to put it.”

Hamish chucks the twine at him.

In minutes, everyone is dressed, and the fifteen of them file their way outdoors. Harry strives to take in everything in sight. It’s his first time seeing the grounds in their entirety, or at all, for that matter, given he’d arrived last night via underground shuttle from the tailor shop. He presumes the same must be true for the others. 

The compound, on first impression, is absolutely sprawling, encompassing what could pass for a sea of open field, manicured precisely enough to be ready for a sporting match of any kind. The estate itself stands steadfastly in the middle of it all like a nineteenth-century castle, or at the very least, a fine manor of nobility. More striking than anything, the center of the lawn is marked with the same emblem as the weaponry, the technology, and the jumpsuits they wear now: a white circle bearing the mark of a horizontal K. Four men could camp on it, easily.

It’s the last he notices of the scenery. Up ahead, over a queue of shoulders, he sees his immediate new favorite thing in the world. A wall of fifteen metal cages, each one containing _the sweetest, most precious little puppy_.

“Oh God, would you look at that!” Rather unprofessionally, he’s slapping Hamish’s arm. It’s a miracle he remembers himself and doesn’t bolt off to tell them all they’re beautiful. _Because they are_. “Do you think it’s possible they’re for us?”

“I think it’s possible you’re something else,” Hamish says affably.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” projects Arthur from the balcony, the moment they’re assembled in line. “I’m quite pleased with your punctuality.”

 _Yes, yes, get on with it, for God’s sake, get to the dogs_. Already, there’s a little fuzzy one looking straight at him. _Oh gosh, he wagged his tail_.

“As most of you came within a childlike shriek of failing your first task, the emphasis imparted by your next assignment will be especially vital. Teamwork in all things is no less than utterly tantamount to your success—and your survival—in the Kingsman line of work. Precisely why, in a moment, you will all come forward and select one of these puppies for yourselves.”

Harry’s resting pulse replicates a hyperactive ten-year-old’s. _Yes! Let us at them, then; I’ll break the wanker’s arm who beats me to the little one_ –

“Your puppies will shadow you twenty-four hours a day. You will be wholly responsible for their care and keeping. You will train them as Kingsman trains you. Ideally, by the end of the program, both you and your dog will have reached your peak potential. If not, well. At least you’ll have done _something_ worthwhile with your time.”

_Are you quite through!? Fall out, fall out, say it!_

“Everyone choose your puppy.”

 _Bloody good enough!_ Harry barges forward, the first to reach the cages. Frankly he’d have no problem lying on the ground and letting all fifteen of the milk-bellied things scuttle all over him, but this is the one he wants. This scruffy little terrier, quite obviously a runt, whose pleading eyes alone could melt the polar ice caps.

He lifts the latch and draws open the cage, first coaxing the tiny fellow forward for an introductory sniff, then gently clasping him between his hands. “Oh, hello, sweetheart,” he whispers, scooping the puppy into his arms. He’s a lump of warm fluff against his chest, warm fluff with _the softest ears in the entire world_. “Hello there! Oh, it’s absolutely wonderful to meet you. Yes, it is. Oh, yes.”

The pup’s going about the business of sniffing his jumpsuit when Hamish reappears, leash in hand. Harry’s eyes trace it down to a puddled little dog who’s just tripped belly-up on her own lead. By this point, whatever torture their training entails, he’s confident he’ll sail right the hell through it, high on these mental images alone.

“What’s that one?” Hamish asks.

“Oh, I’m sure it’s a terrier of some kind. I don’t care. He likes me.” His face hasn’t unscrewed from borderline certifiable joy since they first fell in. “Yours?”

“Bloodhound.” He sounds chuffed with himself, giving a shrug. “I figure it’s right there in the name. Best dog for the job.”

“May I?”

“Certainly.”

Harry crouches, very careful with his own new friend, freeing a hand to stroke the baby bloodhound’s tummy. He has to laugh at the floppy little jowls; she’s almost more roll than dog. “Isn’t she a droopy girl?”

A recruit behind him snorts. “If _that_ isn’t the last thing you want to hear at the disco.”

“ _Fuck off, Winston_.” The prat’s deserved it since turndown last night, when he’d bragged to the room about his father’s yacht in the Aegean. It’s rather satisfying, honestly. Just as quickly as he spat his venom, he’s back to making friends. “Hello, princess! Aren’t we a gorgeous little dog? Oh, yes we are. Yes, we are.”

It’s his proximity to the ground that does it. For a split second, lavishing Hamish’s pup with affection, his hold on his own is too loose. Just long enough for the miniscule mutt to squirm free, barreling across the grounds like a pistol shot. Harry stands and whirls in time to see Winston’s dog take off after him, yanking the lead from his hand.

 _Oh, fuck_.

Both of them burst into a sprint.

“Just _fuckin’_ perfect, isn’t it! Fuck you and your fucking dog, Oxford!” Winston shouts.

“Oh, you know damned well we’re both out of your league!”

“Oi, you get back here, dog! Bad dog!”

“Here boy! Heel!”

The puppies are headed straight for a picnic blanket in the distance. The unsuspecting victim is a man lounged at its center, reading from a manila folder in one hand, eating a sandwich with the other—and more to the point, wearing a bespoke suit, which officially classifies this as Very, Very Bad.

“Fucking hell—excuse me, Sir? Pardon me!”

The agent turns around just in time for Winston’s Doberman to snatch the sandwich from his hand. Harry’s terrier makes off with the only food left on the blanket: a spear of pickle.

The chase ends as quickly as it began. Both puppies brake under a tree, sprawling out to munch their spoils. Harry and Winston stagger to a stop in front of the displeased agent, arms now crossed, looking like he’d love to serve both of their hides at high tea with a bit of Marmite.

“What in the devil is the meaning of this?” the agent demands. “Two minutes into the goddamned task and you idiots can’t manage to keep hold of a _fucking puppy?_ ”

It’s only the third agent he’s met, and already his first impression success ratio is horribly imbalanced. Luckily there’s always a way to recover. Harry stands crisp at attention, hands folded behind his back, and he covers all signs of exertion with his most winning smile.

“I’m _terribly_ sorry, sir…”

“Sir Tristan, that’s all the likes of _you_ need to know.”

Head hung, Winston mumbles, “Sorry, Chester.”

The sigh and eye-roll from Chester-Alias-Tristan are monumentous. He points toward the tree with a rigid arm. “Just go and get the dog, you fucking imbecile.” As Winston trudges off, Chester mutters something else under his breath, something about having better luck had he proposed a grapefruit, but Harry decides it would be found too ungentlemanly to mention that.

“Can I replace your meal for you, sir? I’d be quite happy to.”

“No, thank you. I’m just in from a sixteen-hour flight, and quite frankly, I have already had enough of you infants’ bollocks for one day. Now I suggest you collect your rat and piss off, before I report you to Arthur for incompetence.”

Tugging his lapels, Chester takes leave in a huff, whisking up his blanket. Winston is already gone. With a deep exhale, Harry approaches the shade of the tree, smiling fondly at his puppy, who’s successfully gnawed the pickle down to half.

As he picks him up, he makes sure to bring the hard-won prize along, cradling both thief and snack, starting back toward the group. “Good boy,” he whispers, and presses a kiss to his fur.

 


	4. Acquaintances

“Here.”

Harry slides a plastic tray in front of Hamish, who looks up, startled, from the disassembled wristwatch in his hands.

“What’s all this?”

It’s a curry, a hunk of bread, and a clementine, but they both have eyes, so that’s probably not the answer he’s looking for. Harry slides into the seat opposite, setting down his own tray. Its contents are the same, except his clementine is a lemon Danish. He’s not the one who needs to improve his eating habits.

“I thought perhaps you could use a proper meal,” he explains, unfolding a cloth napkin to tuck across his lap. “We’ve been here a half a month already, and I don’t believe I’ve seen you take anything besides crisps and Tab.”

There’s a shade of something in Hamish’s expression that looks to be on the verge of protest. Harry waits, watching until it passes, only satisfied by his friend’s nod of concession, several moments later.

“S’pose you’re right. Thank you. That’s very kind.”

A smile flares on. “Don’t mention it.” The curry smells wonderful, and he tucks in while it’s hot.

They’re alone in their corner of the mess hall, which bears quite a bit more resemblance to the ones at university than those provided for any branch of military intelligence. He should know. About the first part, at least. His years at Oxford were, up to now, the most rewarding of his life, not the least because he never lacked for a hot meal involving sturdy greens and a port wine gravy. The latter he misses now especially, although Kingsman has far better dinner rolls, so he supposes it works out to a draw.

In a fortnight’s time, the remaining candidates—down to eleven now—have settled into cliques, as it were. Prat Winston has taken to holding court at the front table, with Graham, Chauncey, William, Edgar, and Derrington gravitating to him like gnats to a ten-watt light bulb. The other three lads, whom he’s learnt are called Courtney, Philip, and Kenneth, tend to huddle to themselves in the dimly-lit corner near the chafing dishes, whispering back and forth as if they’re going to be caught and beaten, which is a tad dramatic. Of all his options, he’s glad to have settled here, content with the company of no more than his bunkmate.

About whom he still knows very little, come to think of it.

He waits with extraordinary patience until Hamish has taken at least five bites of food. Then the rest be damned, because curiosity really does kill people, you know.

“I thought we might have a chat, you and I,” he says brightly. “Clearly the both of us are in this for the long haul. I feel as if I hardly know a thing about you.”

“You know my name,” Hamish reminds him. “That’s the highlight, I can promise you.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t believe that for a moment. You’re _here_ , aren’t you?”

His chin juts toward Sir Winston the Odious. “So’re those pricks. Doesn’t mean there’s anything interesting about them.”

“ _Them_ , no.” He’s not going to give up that easily. Harry leans just slightly forward, forearms pressed illicitly on the table. None of the agents are in here anyway. They eat in the conference rooms, like respectable adults with people to kill. “But I have a very different feeling about you.”

Hamish’s expression changes. He pauses in his eating, lowering his spoon, hovering his face above the bowl. He sniffs. Then he takes up the bowl in both hands, holding it toward Harry.

“What?”

“Does that smell funny to you?”

Cautious, concerned, Harry inhales. Maybe this is meant to be another trial. Except there’s nothing. Nothing acrid. No bitter almonds. Cumin, but that’s nothing outside the ordinary. “I don’t smell a thing.”

“You don’t?” Hamish sets the bowl back down, and that’s when the mystique dissolves, replaced by deadpan. “Smells like bribe to me.”

 _You shit_.

“I’m only trying to get to know you.”

For what it’s worth, he’s got Hamish engaged in the conversation now, whether or not it yields anything. Bemusement has the lad now, and he folds his arms on the ledge of table between himself and his supper tray.

“D’you know what I find interesting?” He points at Harry. “That _you’re_ the one always after answers about _me_ , yet I can’t help but notice that other than university, you’ve never volunteered so much as piss about yourself. When I’m sure I could just as easily be the one asking the questions.”

“Could you?” It’s not a challenge. He genuinely doesn’t know why.

Clearly Hamish does. “Oh yes. There’s plenty. Like how the fuck you knew about Kingsman before you were recruited.”

_Oh._

_Oh, damn._

“Mmhm.” He’s barely paused at all, and taken great pains not to react facially, and yet for Hamish, somehow, it’s enough. The smug thing’s got on a ‘checkmate’ look now. “That’s what I thought.”

 _Well, fuck it, then_. “How do you know I knew anything before coming here?”

“Oh, you mean for starters?”

“Yes, I’d appreciate that.”

Hamish ticks off each point on his fingers. “You’ve never asked a single question of Arthur in regards to what’s expected, almost as if you’re familiar with how all this shit goes. You seem to know precisely what to do in any given situation, despite the fact you’ve spent the last four years in a posh boys’ dormitory watching other idiots wank and do cocaine off their midterms.”

“Well I hardly did _that_.”

“And d’you know what I’ve heard you mutter to yourself when you thought nobody was listening? ‘Make Mother proud.’ Now how the fuck could she be proud of what you’re doing unless both of you knew what it was?”

It’s rather uncomfortable, being read like this. Outside his childhood home, this may be the very first time it’s ever happened. He fidgets unconsciously in his seat for a moment. Were he a pettier person, this might knock a point of two off his new friend’s appeal, to be honest.

“I could have meant it figuratively,” he finally comes up with.

“You could, aye. But you didn’t.”

 _God damn it_.

Harry sighs. “All right.”

Furtively, he glances each way, hunching closer across the tabletop. Just because he’s not remotely ashamed of his advantages doesn’t mean he wants the resident cavemen accusing him of unearned nepotism. It’d be terrible form to have to beat his competition unconscious. He looks Hamish in the eye.

“You won’t repeat a thing you hear?”

“My name’s on the body bag, isn’t it?”

It’s not the most reassuring answer on earth, but Harry doesn’t plan to give him the soup-to-nuts version, anyway. No one gets that. Not for a thing. He gets the abridgement, at least for the time being. If _that’s_ not enough, he can kiss his ass.

“Fine. If you want the truth, I’ve wanted to become a Kingsman since I was ten years old. My mother was in intelligence.” Still is, but the past tense is an insulating feature of this version, the same as lack of detail. “A Kingsman agent once assisted her organization on a case; I happened to be shadowing her at her offices the day they met.”

“Were you, now?” It’s slightly insulting that Hamish is incredulous. And just the right blend of amused and unfazed to be irritating as hell. “You’re telling me even high-stakes intelligence has a Take Your Kid to Work Day?”

“No. It was only me. Mother was high-ranking enough that it was allowed, on the grounds that everyone knew she wouldn’t raise a moron. I was expected, by most, to join that organization someday. Secrecy was a normal everyday part of my upbringing. No one ever questioned telling me anything. It was a means of priming me.”

“And that’s how you met a Kingsman agent. Who just conveniently proposed you for the job nearly eleven years later, after openly admitting to a ten-year-old who he was.”

“Only by codename, obviously, and I was a special case; Mother was an internationally-respected VIP agent of one of the most vital—look, you’re the one who wanted to know, aren’t you? And now you don’t believe me?”

Chuckling, Hamish tucks back into his curry. “Nah. I believe you. You just make it so goddamned easy to fuck with you.”

 _I have no fucking idea why I ever liked you, you tacky, obnoxious, sentient little thistle_. To hell with patience. Turnabout is fair play, and he’s going to have it now.

“And what about you?” Harry demands. “At least I had a reason to be secretive. How is it that you manage to evade your own story to make a guess at mine instead?”

Setting down his spoon, Hamish levels with him. He blinks. That’s not what he expected either.

“Because it takes one to know one,” Hamish says. “I knew about Kingsman before I was recruited too.” Then he lifts the wristwatch he’d been fooling with, turning it over to reveal its Kingsman emblem. “There’s a bug in this model. I know because I helped develop it. That’s what I was working on. I’ve been attempting to pin down the problem.”

It’s Harry’s turn to be incredulous. And he is. Very. The scoff practically bursts out of his mouth. “Please. You can’t even be eighteen.”

“I’m seventeen. I’ll be eighteen before the training’s over. That’s old enough.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“That’s the minimum. I checked when I asked for consideration. And you’re not exactly collecting pension at twenty. Frankly I’d expect someone who got into Oxford at sixteen would understand a bit better.”

“Frankly I don’t know how you expect Arthur to allow an eighteen-year-old to play handler to the most elite agents in the world.”

“I don’t, not independently, at first. We’ve spoken already. If I win, he’ll shadow me for a year or so, observe, sign off on all my work until he’s confident. But it’s like you said. I’m here for a reason. I graduated secondary at fourteen with high honors in computers and mathematics. I turned down six international scholarships when I was offered the chance to be an intern in Kingsman’s tech department in Edinburgh. I signed my first body bag a long time ago.”

Absolutely none of that was anywhere on the list of what Harry expected. Several moments pass where he can’t think of anything to say. What finally comes out is, “I didn’t know there was a tech department in Edinburgh.”

“Aye.” Hamish picks up his bread. “They’re moving it to Berlin, though. So I hear. That’s me shit out of luck if I don’t get the job, I s’pose.”

They go back to eating. At least Hamish does. Harry stares. For a solid minute, if not two.

“You’ll get the job,” he says at last, quietly. “I…I never imagined…” He starts over. “Well. You must be fairly brilliant. I suppose I owe you an apology.”

Hamish nods. “S’alright.”

“Thank you.”

Spearing a piece of meat on his fork, Hamish blots off the sauce on his napkin, holding it under the table for Ainsley. It reminds Harry to do the same. Hamish shakes his head. “I can’t believe you fucking called him Mr. Pickle.”

He smiles as the rough little tongue laps his fingers. “Oh, I think he likes it all right.”

“The look on Tristan’s face was worth it, though.”

“Oh, yes.”

They do it again. “So, your mother, huh? The family business? No wonder you’re not concerned with competition.”

Harry nods. “I’ve put the work in, mind you. Of my own will. It’s nothing to do with nepotism—”

“No, I know it isn’t.”

“—but if all goes well, luck willing, it’s only a matter of who gets the job along with me. I must admit I’ve been hoping it’s you. You’re a good conversationalist.”

“I barely speak to anyone,” Hamish points out.

“Yes, well. I’m grading on potential.”

 


	5. Ziplining

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the training tasks—training the puppies; flooding the barracks—were obviously a thing back when Harry trained, because we have proof that he participated in them. Skydiving was not one of them, so we're not gonna do that. I like the idea that there's one original task per recruiting cycle, cooked up by whomever's running the show ( _pssst_ , spoiler: it's me, I'm running the show).

 

It’s a very lucky thing, Harry is all too acutely aware at the moment, that he has never had any particular problem with heights.

“ _Welcome to Mont Blanc_ ,” comes Arthur’s voice over the comlink. “ _Currently, the eight of you are standing over four thousand, eight hundred metres above sea level_.”

 _There are no summits that high in England_. His guess from a few minutes ago had been right. That plane ride felt far longer than it should’ve for a reason. Harry exchanges a glance with Hamish, though it’s difficult to express much of anything behind their parka hoods and snow goggles. It doesn’t matter much, anyway. Any idiot could tell all eight of them are thinking the same thing.

 _This is the part where they give us hell_.

“ _Your task is straightforward. Due north, you will find a bridge, linking the plateau you now occupy with the next. Cross it, and you will find in the crag of the mountain a metal strongbox. Naturally, this box has been sealed against the elements. The method by which it opens will be yours to determine_.”

‘Straightforward’ might not be the word he’d use with a mystery vault to decipher, but so far, nothing sounds all that unreasonably difficult. Harry rubs his gloved hands together for warmth. This shouldn’t be too much trouble.

“ _Retrieve the contents and deliver them to the plane behind you before the countdown displayed on your goggles reaches zero. Failure to complete this task before time runs out will result in swift dismissal from the training program_.”

Then again, a little trouble never hurt anyone.

“ _Take your marks_.”

There are golden x’s in the snow. A row of them, arranged below their boots, perpendicular to the bridge in the distance. The candidates fan out, claiming one apiece, bent into the poses of Olympic sprinters. Harry gives a nod to his immediate right. Hamish nods back.

“ _Begin_.”

Sixteen boots send up powder from the mountainside. Making his break for it, Harry notes the digits in the upper right corner of his vision. 14:58. He overcomes Derrington, then Kenneth. He’s on pace to overcome Graham.

Sixteen metres to the walkway. Fifteen. 14:51.

 _Fifteen minutes. Why would they give us fifteen minutes? What could_ –

The first explosion brings all eight of them to a skidding halt. It’s the second that finishes off the bridge. Flailing wood and rope plummet to the bottom of the gorge in a cloud of flak and snow.

Instinctively, Harry presses the arm of his goggles. But Arthur isn’t there. The line is dead.

 _Of bloody fucking course it is_.

14:10. Quickly, Harry scans the peak in search of an alternate route. There isn’t one. Not besides climbing all the way down and back up again. There isn’t time for that. They’re ill-equipped for that, for that matter. All they’ve got are snowsuits and rifles. _So much for ‘prepared for any eventuality’_ …

His hands fly, bringing the gun to eye-level.

… _unless we are_.

Turning the rifle over, then again, he inspects the barrel in a rush. It was never for weight, never for practice, never for authenticity or imaginary enemies. They have them for a reason. He finds it in a dial on the barrel’s underside. With effort behind his cold, gloved fingers, it turns one click, then another. To a small icon of a hook being cast from a line.

The others are inspecting the drop when he braces a stance at the chasm’s edge, propping the gun on his shoulder, taking aim. He fires, and sure enough, a grappling hook launches from the muzzle, sailing through the air until it clamps solid rock on the other side. The line between weapon and mountainside goes taut. A steel cable.

They’ve all taken notice. “That’s fucking it! Everyone!”

Two more lines go out immediately. Then three. By the time it’s all seven, one of them’s spotted the breakaway marks on the barrel.

“Like this, now!”

The anchor is the barrel itself. Following suit, Harry cracks the gun over his knee and jams the peg that comes away into the snow, beating it down with the butt.

Panting, he stands, calculating. 12:43. There’s a zipline, but no handle bar. Frantically, he starts to pat his snowsuit. These things are identical to their training suits, other than the down and fur; there’s got to be…

_Why would a one-piece garment need a belt?_

He’s going to find out. The buckle is in his hands, then the whole of it. He gives it a tug, then another. Woven into the threads is something that catches the light up here. Coated steel, he’d bet anything.

Sitting beside his line, legs over the edge, he loops the belt across, twisting it again and again round each hand. He takes a deep breath. Then pushes. With a heavy lurch, his bodyweight drops, stomach clenched as he goes whizzing through the air.

 _Don’t think about the ground. Don’t think about the ground_. Like a snow owl, he’s sailing across vastness, echoing amounts of nothing, feet dangling over empty space like ornaments. It’s exhilarating. It’s nauseating. It’s over in seconds, banking his boots harshly against the gorge’s northern face. He struggles to pull himself up as rapidly as possible. His opinion of heights may be up for reevaluation once this day is over.

Timing and angle have favored Winston. With his legs back under him, Harry spies the prat ahead, in the lead. They must’ve launched within seconds of each other. There’s a grunt to his right, and he reaches down toward it. Hamish’s glove slaps into his hand. Joint effort gets him up over the side.

“Oh, I’ll be fucked if I’m gonna lose to _him_ ,” Hamish growls.

“Let’s go.”

11:01. The two of them bullet side-by-side toward the glint of the vault in the distance, the others behind them still preparing to cross the gorge. They make it to Winston’s heels, and the three of them skid to their knees in front of the box together, crowding it in search of an answer. 10:13.

“Out the way, you two, leave it to the big boys,” Winston says.

“Fuck off.” He’d be more creative if it wasn’t so bloody cold. As a substitute, it’d be nice if the cloud of his breath would freeze into something he could knock him on the head with.

“There.” Hamish has the snowdrift cleared properly away from the front of the strongbox. On the front is a recessed square featuring a trio of wheels, like a slot machine, each one askew and marked with different letters of the alphabet. “That’s the way in.”

09:58. “’Course it’s the bloody way in.” Winston bats Hamish’s arm away from the console, setting upon the wheels himself, fiddling until they make a word. S-P-Y.

Nothing happens.

Galled, Harry glares at the back of his head. “You fucking thought the password was _spy?_ ”

“Well how the fuck should _I_ know!?”

Hamish speaks again, this time urgently, eyes wide behind his goggles. “O-N-B. Try O-N-B. Oxfords not brogues. It’s the passphrase.”

Winston can’t get the first wheel back around. 09:16. Hamish bodily shoves him aside and does it himself, to Harry’s surprise, rearranging the set until it spells out O-N-B. A pinhole light they hadn’t noticed turns green. There’s a hiss of air. The vault’s front lifts away, revealing eight padded envelopes.

“Brilliant!” Harry laughs.

“Yeah, yeah, well done, lad.” It’s about as heartfelt as a colonoscopy. Winston reaches in past them both, snatching up the envelope marked ‘W.C.,’ springing off and darting across the snow.

“Fuck.”

“Shit.”

Harry grabs the ‘H.M.’ by mistake. Hamish smashes the ‘H.H.’ into his hand, trading him as they break into an unfettered run, each tucking their parcel for safekeeping into the body of their snowsuits. 08:49.

Winston’s off, sailing has way back across the gorge. Some of the others are just arriving, even still. Others whip past them on foot as they rush toward the ledge. Harry drops, readying his zipline, winding his belt again and again around his hands. Hamish is a mirror image. They work quickly. Trading a nod, at the same time, they shove off.

At 08:01, both Harry and Hamish are zinging breakneck toward the checkpoint. This time, it’s like flying. Harry even considers whooping for joy.

At 08:00, he hears a distinct _sproing_ of a sound to his right.

He looks in time to see Hamish swinging downward. Clinging to his broken wire, hurtling toward the crevice’s face, a chain of panicked ‘whoas’ stringing together into a resonant, plummeting yell.

“ _Shit!_ ” Harry angles his body to speed his flight, crashing his boots into the rock face. He scrambles to solid ground and nearly trips to reach Hamish’s anchor, still wedged into the snow. A hurried look over the side spares him the sight of his friend as any stain on the formation; Hamish has sorted how to cushion the blow. Apparently, these parkas inflate, as well.

“ _Harry!_ ”

07:34. There’s no purchase to be had on the mountainside, no crag. Only ice. Hamish’s grappling hook hangs broken, metres below him, and beyond that, a plummet to death.

No task is worth this. Immediately, Harry’s winding things round his hands again. This time, it’s Hamish’s zipline. He goes belly-down on the outcropping, reaching for as much of the wire as he can grab. “Hold on! Stay calm!”

He rears back to his knees, pulling with all his strength. He tries to inch backwards, intending to get his feet underneath him. Neither action does a goddamned thing. For all the slightness of his frame, Hamish and all his gear are too much weight for Harry alone.

“ _Harry! I can’t hold it much longer!_ ”

Three of the others are returning, climbing to their own anchors. “ _Help me!_ ” Harry barks the moment they set foot on earth. It’s Courtney, William, and Graham. The pack of them rush over as Harry gets to his feet, and the four take positions at the cable.

“On three!”

“ _Fuck three!_ ” comes from the gorge. “ _Fucking fuck three! I’m dangling off a cliff, you fucking pull on one!_ ”

They pull on one. Harry gives it his might, shoving loops of cable backward into hands struggling to catch up. He pulls until his lungs feel they might give out. Until his hands, he’s sure, are bloody beneath his gloves.

Until he sees the top of his bunkmate’s head, and leaves the cable to the other three, lunging to seize his arm.

A last heave brings him over, and they both land hard, side-by-side on powdery backs under an azure sky. At 04:06, they’re catching their breath. Harry knows the pat on his shoulder is the mute term for gratitude.

Just like he knows why the countdown flashes red upon reaching 03:00.

He’s off and running despite every muscle in his body. “Come on!” Like _hell_ they’re going through all of this only to fail at the finish line. The plane waits in the distance. They can make it, both of them. He wrangles a glimpse over his shoulder to see Hamish closing in, albeit with the grace of a rag doll. He grins manically, eyes ahead.

They’re the last four boots in the stampede, thundering madly down the white. Harry nearly trips on ice; a hand wrenches his elbow. The readout taunts them with 01:59, and they go faster, surging on a burst of speed and mad determination.

Nearly tripping, they clamor up the airstairs. No sooner do they collapse into upholstered seats than the countdown is canceled remotely. At 00:01.

Harry whips the goggles off his face, dropping them behind him from a limp hand. _Fucking hideous things, anyway_.

They’re wheels-up when the crackling voice of Arthur fills the cabin.

“ _Congratulations_ ,” he tells the candidates. “ _You have all completed a most difficult task. One with several unexpected complications, no less_.”

“Unexpected fucking complications?”

Forget the demolition of the fucking bridge; what exactly would they have proposed to have done if anyone had died out there? Sacrifice for the greater good is one thing, a thing he understands and supports and would _gladly_ sign his life to, but sacrifice for a _drill?_ For the _experience?_ What would they have told Hamish’s aunt, the woman who raised him? That it was all right her boy had died because he had _learnt something?_

“ _If you have something to say, Harry, by all means_ ,” comes the feedback.

He hadn’t known Arthur could hear them. Honestly, he doesn’t care. Nor does he care if any of these other lads hear, either.

“It was an accident, then?” he demands. “The faulty grappling hook? Not another one of your death-defying life lessons? For God’s sake, he’s _seventeen_. There is no level of skill that makes unnecessary risk permissible, not on someone with their life ahead of them.”

He sees Hamish staring as if no one’s ever said those words before. Everyone else glances awkwardly about the cabin. The intercom remains so silent, he wonders if Arthur has flat ‘hung up’ on him.

Finally, it cuts in.

“ _There was a net, Harry_.”

… _Oh_.

“ _Fifty metres down the gorge. A mountaineer’s net, invisible from your height, reinforced with a micro-elastic technology developed by our textiles department in Cardiff_.”

He’s beginning to wish the rest of them weren’t listening.

“ _Let this be a lesson to the lot of you_ ,” Arthur says. “ _A Kingsman only condones the risking of one life to save another. There are no exceptions_.” They hear him softly clear his throat. “ _To that end: Winston_.”

Winston sits up, looking to the ceiling of the plane as if somehow Arthur was plastered up there, the fucking twat. “Yes, sir?”

“ _My personal congratulations on completing the assignment in record time. You’ve won the challenge. When you return, your reward will be to pack your bags_.”

Everything about his daft expression takes a fast turn south. Harry glances at Hamish to find he’s not the only one concealing a laugh of surprise.

“But…sir!?”

“ _You were well within range to assist your teammates. And you heard Harry call for help. You failed to prioritize real and immediate danger over the promise of personal recognition. So have you failed Kingsman, myself, and Agent Tristan, as well_.”

 _Oh, God, it just keeps getting better_.

“ _You’re dismissed from the program. Effective immediately. Is this understood?_ ”

Slumping down, arms folded, Winston emits a petulant, “Yes, sir.”

“ _Good. Then I shall see you all back at HQ. Over and out_.”

The remainder of the plane ride is as smooth sailing as any flight has ever been, or could possibly be. At the honor bar, Harry finds peanuts, and he passes a packet back and forth with Hamish while the clouds go rolling by.

 


	6. The Modern Gentleman's Armour

By now, the compound has been home for so long that Harry is almost enamored to see London again. It’s easy to forget how much he loves these streets, the shops, the throngs of people going about their days. Easy to forget, but easier to remember.

He walks primly at the elbow of his proposing agent, a man named Martin Turner. The same who’d first met him as a ten-year-old, enthralling him with images of the world of gentleman spies. A world he’d never known to be real, until then, even with what his mother did for a living. Gentlemen were a much rarer breed in her work, after all. Some of her stories could turn a woman to the nunnery.

As Agent Lamorak, Martin has been kept away for nearly the whole of Harry’s training so far, busy with some mission or other, always jet-setting this way or that. They’ve spoken only a couple of times, but it’s no bother. Obviously, it’s more than understandable. All the more reason to take him up on his sudden invitation, delivered in person this morning in the training room, clear out of the blue.

They enter the tailor shop, Martin holding the door. Harry smiles, hands in his pockets, taking in the atmosphere for the first time through a proper candidate’s eyes. His last visit here felt like a new world. This time, it feels like coming home. He’s quite ready to get used to that feeling.

“’Morning, Simons,” Martin greets the headtailor.

“Good morning to you, sir.” The old man’s only movement seems to be the quiver of his mustache. “May I be of assistance to you gentlemen?”

“Yes, in fact, you may, Simons.” Martin’s head tips toward him. “I’d like for you to meet Harry Hart, my proposal for one of the open positions.”

As he was raised to do, Harry gives his hand, and the headtailor accepts. They shake. “How do you do, sir,” Harry says with a smile.

“Very well, thank you.”

“Simons here is nothing less than the best this business has got, Harry,” Martin boasts. “You’ll be taken good care of with him.”

“Oh, I have no doubt, sir.”

Then he blinks so rapidly he may have to blame the mothballs.

“Wait, sir… ‘Taken care of?’”

Simons politely withdraws his hand, which is fine, because it leaves Harry’s free to drop to his side like the dead weight it is. The way Martin is looking at him makes him wonder if perhaps there’s a television camera hidden somewhere, and his own expression will be plastered on newsstands and billboards by morning.

“You didn’t think I’d let you finish out the program without your own Kingsman souvenir, did you?” Martin grins. “The hell with that. It’s time you were fitted for your first proper bespoke. Unless you object, of course.”

“No sir!” _Well, that could have been less of a yelp_. He swallows, tempers himself, and tries again, managing formality despite his whole face splitting ear-to-ear. “I mean…no, sir. Thank you, sir. I’d be quite honored.”

“Mmhm. That’s what I thought.” The agent points to a heavy door of oak, off to Harry’s left. Simons comes out from behind the counter, a cloth tape measure hung over his shoulder, and Martin claps him on the back. “Give him the works now. This young man is our honored guest.”

“Of course, sir.” Simons does his best impersonation of a five-star doorman, motioning Harry into the room. “This way, please, Mr. Hart. Fitting room one.”

It’s the last thing on earth he’d have to be asked twice. He hustles forward, grateful it doesn’t turn into a cartwheel.

“I’ll be out here when you’re through,” Martin calls.

The fitting room is one of the plainest cubicles of space ever knocked together by man, little more than patterned wallpaper, brass hooks, and varnished wainscoting, but it takes Harry all of four seconds to decide that he loves it every bit as much as the rest of the place. He’s patient with Simons’s meticulous taking of his measurements, lifting arms on command, turning this way and that, holding various swatches of fabric to his chest for God knows how long. That’s the difference between the Kingsman Tailors and anywhere else. When he works here, he’s going to have to do something kind for Simons. A thank-you note, perhaps, with something for his trouble inside. Cinema tickets or something. It’s terribly kind of him to go out of his way for this.

In good time, the tailor excuses himself, returning moments later with a garment bag draping both tabled arms. “Try this, sir,” he bids, hanging the bag on one of the hooks. “It should give you a fair idea. If you find it’s to your liking, then we will proceed with alterations.”

He’s never stared so reverently at a bag before. “Thank you… Thank you kindly.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

This is it. This is the moment he’s imagined since he was a ten-year-old boy, pinning horrible drawings of suits between the butterflies on his walls. The concrete start of his new life.

The garment bag is shed to the floor before Simons is even fully gone. His brain suggests some analogy to a chrysalis, but he can’t be bothered to spare a thought to connect it. He strips to briefs and socks, dressing quickly, his back turned staunchly to the mirror. Stealing a glance too soon will ruin something about this. He isn’t sure what, but it matters.

In a moment, it’s done. He feels the places that need taking in—cuffs at his knuckles, rumpled elbows, puddles at his feet—but he doesn’t care. It’s the most comfortable thing in the world.

He turns around.

The suit is blue, he notices properly. A very, very dark navy blue. Fine pinstripes crawl the length of it. Simons has picked him a tie to match. Navy, with a slim white stripe, centered with a slimmer note of red. He takes in the two rows of handmade buttons. The press of the lapel.

Harry blinks the blur from his eyes. It is the most exquisite thing he’s ever worn.

 _We’ve done it, Mother. I wish you could see your boy now_.

He’s making a mental note to phone her as soon as possible when another tap comes on the door. “Pardon me, sir. Agent Lamorak requests to have a look, if you’ll oblige coming out for a moment.”

He’s absolutely bursting to show someone, anyway. Lamorak will do wonderfully for now. Harry turns the heavy knob, consciously matching his stride to the elegance a suit like this commands. His expression, on the other hand, is under no such control.

Martin stands from the couch, letting out a long whistle. “You’ve outdone yourself, Simons. A few tucks and it’s a work of art.”

“Very kind of you to say, sir.”

“And this comes in the lot, yes?”

“Already ordered to your specifications, sir.”

“You’re a fucking gem.” Martin smiles Harry’s way, holding out a finger with each next word. “Bulletproof, water-resistant, flame-resistant, and conceals up to thirteen highly-classified armaments. There’ll be nothing you can’t do in this, believe you me.”

He believed it already. In front of the showroom mirror, Harry gives a crisp tug to the jacket, straightening his posture even further than it was to begin with. “I really don’t know what to say, sir. I can’t possibly thank you enough; I know this isn’t typical for only a candidate…”

“Nonsense. You’ve earned it.” His mentor takes a pull from a rock glass he’s been holding. Gin, it looks like. “Your weapons and written test scores were absolutely phenomenal.”

 _Yes, they were, weren’t they?_ He can’t help it. He’s had a feeling.

“And I’m not permitted to tell you specifics, but I can say that you’ve earned Arthur’s attention on almost every one of your practical tasks.”

That reminds him to ask. He makes eye contact through the mirror, rather than twist round in the suit. “If I may, sir, what was in those parcels we retrieved on the mountain, anyway?”

“In the envelopes? Those were floppy disks.” Swallowing another sip, Martin makes quotations with his hands. “‘Encrypted files of critical importance to international security.’ That’s this year’s bullshit for ‘Arthur’s _Doctor Who_ fan club mailing list.’ Gives him an excuse for missing the last fifteen meetings.”

“You’re kidding.” _Of course he isn’t_.

“Of course I’m not.”

_Why did I ask?_

He’s basking in the jovial moment until Martin’s demeanor goes stony, his gaze laser-focused through the window. His tone changes in the drop of a hat.

“Harry, do as I say. Whatever you do, don’t counteract or seem suspicious,” he mutters levelly. “Time to prove your place in the family business.”

The miniature bell above the door jingles. In comes a portly man in an expensive windbreaker, lighting directly on Lamorak. Harry watches, indifferent neutrality on his face, as the newcomer ignores Simons entirely, no acknowledgment— _sorry, Simons, he’d do well to remember you’re a person, too_ —and instead, steps up to grasp Lamorak’s hand.

They shake cordially. “Mr. Kuznetsov,” Lamorak’s far brighter with his greeting than he might’ve been. “On schedule as always.”

“Mr. Evansbee.” _An alias. For a mysterious Russian_. “How could I miss one of our treasured conversations?” _Lamorak set this meeting. It isn’t the first, or the tenth, either. What kind of conversations?_

“Please, allow me to introduce a star pupil of mine from the university. I’m helping him to look his finest when he represents us at St. Hugh’s next month. Oliver Greene, this is Mr. Kuznetsov, one of my trustworthiest colleagues.”

Harry doesn’t need a cue. Seamlessly he adopts his new self, shaking the hand he’s offered. “How do you do, sir.”

“I get by.”

He sends Lamorak the most innocuous look he’s got. “Shall I leave you to it, Professor? You’ve been more than enough help already.”

It’s the right decision. Nothing he gets in return suggests a forthcoming reprimand. “Yes, good lad, Oliver. You can go and get your things. I’ll see you in lecture on Monday.”

“Very good, sir. Lovely to meet you, Mr. Kuznetsov.”

“The pleasure is all mine, of course.”

 _Whatever you do, don’t counteract_. His only move is to beeline for the fitting room, then, the outing finished just as quick as it began. The last he sees of Martin Turner, he’s hooked an arm around the Russian’s shoulders, leading the way to the sofas, carrying on a lively discussion in whispers.

 _So this trip was no coincidence._ Harry is implicitly careful as he removes each piece of his suit, hanging one at a time for Simons to collect. He isn’t disappointed. It should have occurred to him from this morning. Whatever Lamorak’s working on must be drawing to a close.

Besides. He could have met the contact here alone. No part of that required having a custom suit made.

 _Be grateful you were invited in the first place, and don’t ask why it’s over_.

Well. He can’t make promises about the second part.

“Good-bye, Simons,” he says aloud near the exit, after saying a silent one to the suit in the fitting room. “I’ve left everything sorted for you.”

“Wonderful, sir. Good-bye.” It’s almost their last exchange, until the tailor catches himself. “Oh, and one more thing, sir?” He’s scribbling in a leather folder.

Harry stops, halfway through the door jamb, hoping it doesn’t count as counteraction. “Yes?”

Simons looks up, beaming friendliness. “I’ve located your file with us to store your measurements. Isn’t today your birthday, sir?”

Yes, it is. He’s all but forgotten that for the past ten minutes.

Harry smiles back. “Twenty-first,” he confirms.

“Happy birthday, sir.”

It’s certainly shaping up to be.

 


	7. Loyalty

“For God’s sake, will you shut that dreck off?”

It’s that awful Blondie song on the radio again, the one he’s hated since it first came out months ago. Something about the tide over and over. Looking somewhat chastised—he hadn’t meant to snap, but _good God_ —Kenneth reaches for the shared stereo and switches to another station. Hall & Oates drift through the barracks instead. _Far_ more tolerable.

“Thank you,” Harry says, making an effort to sound more kindly this time.

Mr. Pickle pirouettes for attention at his feet. Returning to a smile, Harry leans forward in his seat, stroking the ruff of fur above his collar. _I haven’t forgotten you, don’t worry._ For a moment, they’re joined by a nosy Ainsley, but then she ambles off, posting herself at the door, wuffing at something or other.

“Hey,” Hamish warns. He snaps his fingers at his side. “Come on now, there’s nothing there for you. Here, girl.”

Ainsley returns, but she wasn’t off the mark. There’s a sharp one-two rapped on the door, and then it opens, bearing Arthur. The six remaining candidates burst to their feet.

“At ease,” Arthur tells them. He consults his clipboard while they sink back down, exchanging nervous glances. “I come bearing good news. Tonight, you will all be attending a party.”

Harry’s peripheral picks up Graham easing into a grin, then Derrington flicking him upside the head. “S’not gonna be for fun, idiot,” he catches.

Arthur is holding out a stack of laminated sheets of paper, the contents indecipherable from here. “Hand those around,” he says to William, who dutifully complies.

Getting his hands on one doesn’t answer any questions. It’s a photograph of a woman, unidentified, presumably in her early twenties. Peeking over shoulders, Harry notices that two of the others have the same one. The rest, including Hamish, share a second lady. Same age, similar anonymity. Different haircut.

“Sir?”

“The women in these photographs will be the targets for your next task.”

 _I don’t like the sound of that_. “I…don’t suppose you mean interrogating them, or something like that?”

There’s an abrasive cackle from Derrington’s direction. “He means fucking them. Bit of slam and scram.”

It’s more than slightly surprising to see Arthur whip the photo away and whack him over the head with it.

“Rubbish,” he admonishes, jutting the page back into the flinching man’s hands. “And don’t ever let me catch a thing so crass out of your mouth again. A Kingsman agent must be prepared to use any means necessary to an end; that does not mean he uses the opportunity to misconduct himself. We are gentlemen above everything, and covert or not, you will be representing Kingsman to the world. I’ll not have anyone behaving like cavemen under our umbrella.”

 _And we’ve all seen what those can do_ , Harry considers adding, but he really wouldn’t rather interrupt at the moment.

“Yes. Your assignment is to win the favor of these young women. The objective is to inspire her to offer up her company for the night. But so help me, you will be charming, you will be civil, and you will remember you are speaking to another human being. Attempts to complete the task with _any less_ than one hundred percent voluntary consent will not be tolerated, punishable by _immediate_ dismissal, if not worse. Am I quite perfectly understood?”

Their six ‘yes sirs’ are simultaneous, which is a relief, frankly.

“All right then.”

A hand goes up, despite the fact that this isn’t primary school. “How come only two, when there’s six of us?” Kenneth asks.

This is the part where Arthur starts to smile. Rather wickedly, in fact.

“Well. What fun would it be without a bit of competition?”

Harry looks to Hamish, who’s looking back with the same trepidation. _Oh, good. At least it isn’t only me_.

It doesn’t take them very long to dress when Arthur leaves. Mainly because a garment bag has appeared on each of their bunks by the time they arrive at them. He’s stopped asking where these things come from. He puts everything on with a detached efficiency, saving his first proper look for the finished product, curiosity compelling him toward the mirror when he’s through. It’s a melon-pink blazer and slacks he’s got on, both in a fashionably-oversized ill fit, topping off a clinging beige turtleneck. Lucky thing Arthur’s got people for this. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t wear a stitch of this without cash up front.

Not that he doesn’t pull it off, of course.

A crane of the neck buys him a look at Hamish’s getup, and then he caws out the most graceless laugh imaginable by man.

Hamish is scowling. “Fuck off.”

It’s the most nauseatingly-patterned disgrace of a button-down, black and white with loops all over, and an oversize black bowler hat, clearly custom-made for someone whose skull was an animated watermelon. With a fondness for rosaries, no less, because he’s wearing three. Green slacks come out at the bottom somewhere, but it’s hardly their fault. They shouldn’t be burned without a fair trial. “I saved your life; I get to enjoy this from here to the transport.” There’s a brooch on the brim of the hat. With a feather in it. A turquoise one. _My God, if a pawn shop could vomit up a human being_.

“Remember when we didn’t talk?” Hamish starts his march toward the exit. “I miss that. Let’s go back to that.”

Harry scurries up to stay on his heels. “Sorry, not on your life.”

“I fucking hate this mission.”

“I’ll give it this: wherever we’re going certainly must be somewhere interesting.”

It isn’t, because of course it isn’t.

It’s a nightclub. Only once in his life has Harry ever been to one of these. His roommate at Oxford once dragged him along for a stag, where he came to the conclusion that intriguing company is wasted on rooms where you can’t bloody hear yourself think. They’ve gotten worse in the past year, clearly. The floors in this one are stickier, and the lights flash at a more obnoxious speed than he remembers. _Oh good, I love scouring for targets in the Blitz_.

The six of them split off almost immediately. They’ve got women to find and very little time to find them, which adds up to quite a few backs-of-heads to shout at. At least the music vibrating in Harry’s skull is a fair distraction from what was doing it before.

Truthfully, he’s never done this. He’s never seduced a woman. Or a man, for that matter. Sure, of course there’d been opportunities, at Oxford particularly, that had presented themselves, and yet… Nothing, to this day. And the strangest thing: he isn’t even sorry. There were always other goals in his sights, other prizes to keep his eye on. There was Kingsman.

Much like there is now. Watching him remotely, waiting for him to miraculously become Roger Moore and inspire a young woman to take her clothes off.

 _This is going to be a very long night_.

A server passes, then rounds on him, wordlessly offering a flute of champagne specifically to him. At this rate, it doesn’t sound like a terrible idea. Nerves will bugger him up for sure. Nodding in lieu of shouting thanks above the noise, Harry accepts, downing a generous pull before the man is even gone.

“Looking for someone?” the server yells helpfully.

 _So much for avoiding that_. “Yes, actually.” He drinks again, hoping to stall a bit. His dread is honest-to-God making the room spin now, but like hell that’s getting included in his answer. “I…”

Now the lights. They’re… They’re obscuring everyone. Everyone is…changing colors…

“I…seem to have…misplaced her… I’m… I’m looking…”

“That’s a shame, Harry,” the server says. The last thing that floats into his sight is the most leering smile. “Because _I’ve_ been looking for _you_.”

 

 

***   *   ***

 

 

He wakes to the cold shock of a tidal wave.

Thrashing his head, coughing, choking, Harry grabs. At nothing. A zip tie digs into his wrist. It’s behind his back, tethered to the other one. Around a chair. He’s in a chair. And his feet are bound. Tugging doesn’t free them.

His chest heaves erratically, partly in fear, partly for lack of breath. It’s not the time for either. _Get ahold of yourself. Open your eyes_.

He does. He scans desperately. In every direction, darkness. And concrete. Concrete walls, concrete pillars. He can tell there’s concrete under his feet. _It’s a parking structure_. There’s not enough light to tell him anything else. Nothing about where exactly this is. Or why he’s here. And there’s…

There’s something strapped to his chest. A box. A box, with…

With a readout on the front. Numbers. Red numbers.

Counting down.

A flashlight clicks on in the hand of a man ahead of him. Banishing shadow from the corner he was hiding in. Illuminating a face. It’s the server’s, from the nightclub.

“How wonderful you could join us, Harry,” the man says.

Harry thrashes forward in his seat. “Untie me. Untie me _this instant_.”

“Oh, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” He stops straining as the man comes closer, horrifyingly aware of the metronome both inside and outside of his chest. “You see, Harry Hart, there are ways that you and I can help each other.”

 _This is to do with that Russian man. Or one of Mother’s enemies. What else do they know? What else have they gone after?_ He pulls at his wrists until the zip tie chafes away a layer of skin. “Kill me and you’ll regret it.” He swallows hard. “Kill me and there won’t be a safe place for you to hide. I promise you that.”

The man _tsks_ , and his voice becomes a lull. Nauseating. “You think I’d _prefer_ to kill you? What an awfully rude assumption… I’d very much prefer for you to live. And that can certainly be arranged.” He nods toward the device, ticking away. “I, and I alone, have the code to disarm that bomb you’re wearing.”

 _A bomb. So it’s a bomb for certain, then_. He’d been hoping against hope he was wrong. _Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, get me out of here_.

“I’d like nothing more than to do that for you, Harry. There’s just one thing you have to give me first. The truth. About Martin Turner, and the fucking Kingsman ‘Tailors.’”

The beeps of the device drown out the cretin’s voice, and they’re in turn drowned out by memories. It’s not his whole life that flashes before his eyes. It’s the relevant parts, and he hears one now in particular, even as a bead of sweat rolls down his spine. His mother’s voice, a little sad. _“Always remember, Harry. In this business, it’s the good of the world that must come first. Even when we don’t like it. Even when we wish we could do more.”_

He looks up from under a darkened brow, personally damning this man to burn.

“We’re open Monday to Saturday, seven to five, you spineless piece of shit.”

His captor laughs loudly, completely devoid of both humour and joy. Bordering on rage. “You don’t want to die like all the others, do you, Harry?”

 _The others. No. Hamish. He hasn’t. He can’t have_.

“I’ve blown seven of you little pricks to shit tonight; what the fuck do you think one more’s going to be?”

He’s starting to back up. One large, slow step at a time. Harry forces his chin as far down as it goes and barely makes out the upside-down readout.

There are ten seconds left. _Ten fucking seconds_.

“Your last chance is slipping away, Harry.” His backward walk quickens. “The price is Kingsman. I hate to see you die as stupid as the others.”

Five seconds, if that. Five seconds left to live. Harry shuts his eyes as tight as they go, rushing a silent prayer to whatever’s listening. _Let my mothers know. Let them be proud of me. Don’t let them grieve too long_.

The man disappears behind the concrete wall just as the roar rips from Harry’s throat.

“ _Then we’ll all see you in hell!_ ”

The beeps spasm. He braces.

Then they stop altogether.

For ten, fifteen seconds, Harry doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t so much as open his eyes. Not until he hears the sound of footsteps, too solid, near and real to be the afterlife. His eyes bolt open, and this time, the man with the flashlight isn’t the server. It’s Agent Lamorak.

He looks down. The timer, stopped at zero, blinks itself off.

Only then, finally, does he exhale, slumping as far as he’ll go.

“Absolutely fucking extraordinary,” pronounces Martin. “Not that that’s any great surprise to anyone.” From his coat pocket, he produces a small knife, swiftly cutting loose his ankles, then his hands. “Congratulations. You’ve passed beautifully.”

 _Passed_ … Harry rubs his wrists while his mentor slashes the bindings in back of the chair. “It was a trial all along. There was no woman.”

“No, there was a woman. Cynthia and Maeve, from our call centre. About four of you actually made it that far. No results of course, but fun to watch all the same.”

 _I should have fucking known_. He wishes somebody would tell his heartrate.

“All right, that should do. Go on and take that dud off.”

He stands, slightly dizzy from the aftereffects of the drugs, peeling electricians’ tape from his soaked, awful jacket. “What of the others? How have they done?”

“Kenneth and Graham both failed like Hitler at Stalingrad. Sang like canaries, the poor bastards. You’re the first one to pass.”

“And Hamish?” Harry refills with hope for his friend, grateful for the second time he isn’t dead.

“He’s next. Takes a bit to set up.” Martin eyes Harry. “Want to watch?”

“...Yes, actually.”

They reach the control room in time to see Hamish, newly hatless and pissed, struggling against his chair on the infrared monitor. He’s facing off against the same assailant. Harry feels mildly bad for calling the man a piece of shit now. He’s very convincing. Probably works in their hangar or something like that.

“ _I’ll make this simple. Tell me everything you know about Duncan Billingsley and the Kingsman operation, and I’ll keep you from blowing sky high like all your friends_.”

“ _Please. Like fuck you could kill Harry Hart_.”

He’s oddly touched by that. It’s awfully sweet of Hamish to say in the midst of supposing he might die. He’ll have to remember to tell his mother he’s made that impression on someone.

“ _You can do what you like to me. I dunno what you’re talking about. I’m a fucking tailor’s apprentice, and you can go fuck yourself_.”

“ _Have it your way_.”

The man retreats out of frame. Hamish tenses. The decoy bomb’s rapid beeping fills the feed with static. It’s far calmer to watch than to experience. Harry wishes momentarily that the camera better captured Hamish’s expression, knowing he’s petrified, the poor thing. _Give it a moment, you’re all right_.

They watch Lancelot emerge.

“ _At ease, son, you’re not dead. Congratulations. I’m proud to say you’ve passed the test_.”

It doesn’t take any delay for Hamish to lunge as if to punch him.

“ _Oh, the fucking test!? The fucking test, is that it!? Fuck you too. Fuck you. Fucking hell. I’ve got a mind to strap you down to one of these, see how long it takes you to shit yourself. That’s the last time I drink the fucking champagne_.”

Harry can’t help but laugh as Martin knowingly holds down the two-way button for him. “Not a bad idea,” he says, and the Hamish on the screen visibly flinches, looking up toward the parking level above for the source of the broadcast.

“ _Harry? Where the fuck are you?_ ”

“The control room,” he grins. “Come and join us. There’s still a good chance to see at least one of the others cry like a baby.”

Hamish is still for a moment while Agent Lancelot cuts him loose. There’s an appeased resignation when he stands, following his mentor.

“Yeah, all right.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (If you thought Hamish's outfit was based on Boy George, [boy, were you right](https://image.ibb.co/icsUq8/28997_1395424075_Janette_Beckman_Boy_George_Nottinghill_Gate_London_1981_xl.jpg))


	8. Shoot The Dog

It’s four of them left at the end. Harry, Hamish, and their final hurdles, Derrington and William. Harry thinks back to the moment they stood there, proposing agents at their shoulders, and listened to Arthur inform them they’d reached the final stage.

Everything had rung in his ears for the remainder of the night. Possibly it might’ve had a thing or two to do with having been drugged, but there’s plenty reason enough to doubt it was only that. Surreality, for one thing. Utter surreality.

One sentence, and his goal was within reach. No other candidate craves this the way he does. They haven’t had the chance.

He’s finally reached the stage that’s going to change his life forever. One way or another.

Harry glances anxiously around the drawing room where he was told to wait, kneading his hands, minding Mr. Pickle at his feet. He’s trying to conjure up a focused mental review of his past twenty-four hours with Martin. There’d been plenty of advice, he was sure. Peppered with years of a seasoned field agent’s wisdom, cautionary tales, and all sorts of things like that. The problem is, the only thing he can seem to remember is the proper way to make a martini. _Ice, gin, vermouth, shake, pour, garnish_. It’s not very helpful at the moment.

His gaze jumps up when the door opens, expecting Arthur. Instead, it’s Hamish, Ainsley loping obediently at his heels. He shuts the door behind him and comes to sit, settling on the far end of Harry’s divan.

The two hold a shared look for a beat or two, capped off with singular nods. It’s a heavy moment, and that’s acknowledgment enough of that.

Until it isn’t, because who are they to kid themselves at this point.

“Are you nervous?” Hamish asks quietly. It’s the most pensive Harry’s ever heard him.

He can’t give that anything but honesty. He lets his head bob. “Yes. Very much.” Then he looks left, watching his friend contemplate his hands. “You?”

The silence lasts far longer than he expected it to. Hamish doesn’t look up. He hardly moves at all, in fact. It lasts until Harry is tempted to ask what the matter is.

Then, without preamble, he doesn’t have to.

“My aunt died three years ago,” Hamish says.

Immediately, Harry’s empathy is lead in his stomach. He wouldn’t dream of prodding this time.

“I was just a tyke when my parents’ car wrecked in the highlands. Didn’t even think twice before she took me in.”

He has to pause. Harry’s overwhelmingly compelled to let him off the hook.

“You don’t have to tell me any of this,” he insists softly.

Hamish’s head shakes. His hands cover his knees, and his glance finds the window. He continues.

“We lived in Edinburgh. Got by all right on her pension, and she’d patch up the neighbors’ clothes for a discount whenever we needed a little extra. Worked her fingers to the bone for me, she did. Then, one day… Pneumonia. Ten days in hospital, and that was it. It was foster homes after that. Four, maybe five of them. Shit ones, mostly.”

The more of this he says out loud, the more vulnerability his stoic face betrays. Harry knows what’s coming. It doesn’t take a genius to get there.

“I turned eighteen a week ago,” Hamish reveals, and it’s the softest part of all. His eyes drift somewhere far away. “If this…”

He doesn’t say any more. They both know he doesn’t have to. Harry works out the rest on his own. There won’t be another foster home. Or any funds to follow his intern work to Berlin, either.

There’s nothing left for Hamish out there. Nowhere to go.

Maybe Harry’s not the one who wants this the most after all.

Harry wracks his brain for something to say. It takes several moments, but he lands on something he thinks might hit the right note. His inspiration licks her paw.

“Is Ainsley named after her?” he asks.

Hamish nods again. It’s hard to spot at first, but one side of his mouth shows signs of twisting toward amusement. “What’d you study at Oxford, anyway? Let me guess: psychology?”

“Political science major with a minor in entomology, specializing in lepidoptery.”

“Lepi-what-the-fuck?”

“It’s the study of butterflies.”

“I was right, you’re something the fuck else.” Grinning faintly now, Hamish sighs, and he retraces his mental steps, idly scratching behind his bloodhound’s ear. “Mrs. Ainsley. Her and my mother’s maiden name. That’s what she liked everyone to call her. God help the sod who didn’t. It was Aunt Ainsley to me, too, no exceptions.”

Hopefully it’s in good taste to ask questions again, because he can’t resist poking at the pattern he’s seeing. He’s a shit, after all. “Why was that?”

“Oh, her first name was Agathe. She fucking hated the thing.”

Harry’s urge to laugh slips free before he can temper it.  Slowly, it catches, and by the time Arthur appears in the doorway, the two of them are confusing the hell out of the dogs, employing sleeves to rid the tears from their eyes.

“We’re ready for the both of you,” Arthur says. “If and when you’re quite finished.” He gives nothing more to their antics past a single peaked eyebrow. It’s very evidently not his first foray, but he looks like he’d love for it to be the last. Harry straightens quickly, aware of Hamish doing the same.

The adjacent doors have opened as well. One to the right, the other left. Lamorak is framed in one. Lancelot in the other.

There’s one order of business left before he takes his summons. Standing tall, Harry protrudes his hand to Hamish.

“Good luck, friend.”

Hamish clasps it, shaking heartily.

“And to you.”

 _Whatever awaits, may we both be Kingsman when it’s through with_.

Turning apart, they go their separate ways. Harry hears the shutting of doors behind him, comforted by Mr. Pickle’s loyal trot as he meets Agent Lamorak, entering a sunlit parlor. It’s the sort of room he’d love to read a book in. Maybe he will, once he’s an agent. Because he’s _going_ to be an agent. He’s going to be.

“Have a seat,” Martin instructs. Harry does, and so does Mr. Pickle. _Just look at you. You couldn’t possibly be better behaved. I hope you know how much I appreciate you making me look good on this_.

After all this time, Harry knows better than to expect his instructions straightforwardly. He knows to wait for them. He’s still waiting when Martin reaches into his jacket, pulling out his handgun. Extending it to him.

“Take it,” he says.

The sinking feeling in the pit of his gut knows something that he doesn’t. He wishes it would tell him sooner than later. Harry takes the weapon cautiously, eyes plastered to the agent’s face, seeking out the answer.

“That’s a full clip.”

It seems a little obvious to point out. _You don’t say? I’d have expected most Kingsman to carry around empties for the fun of it_. The fact that he’s deflecting even in his own head is a fairly severe warning sign.

Something is wrong. Something awful is coming. He just doesn’t know _what_.

Until Martin calmly finishes his sip of liquor.

“Shoot the dog,” he says.

Harry’s world narrows to a single frame, zooming nauseously to a point, and that point is Mr. Pickle’s trusting face. He wants to retch. He wants to turn the gun on Martin, just for the suggestion, and _fuck_ all he’s done for him. All he can do is stare at him in shock.

_How can this be what you want from me? How can this be what you’re asking?_

He wonders if his mother would fault him if he left this room and never looked back. He wonders how long it would take him to fault himself.

He rips his appalled gape away from Lamorak, landing it where it belongs, letting it soften to something between pure love and despair. Mr. Pickle shifts his weight patiently to new paws, unaware of any of this. Unaware that he… That this could…

He can’t even think it. He can’t imagine a world in which obeying that order is okay. In which he can live with himself in the aftermath. Every suit would be blood red to him. Every one of his triumphs tainted with the sickest form of selfishness, the murder of something that had unconditionally loved and trusted him, who hadn’t done a thing to anyone. A completely–

Harry’s mind reboots itself.

 _A completely innocent being_.

 _A Kingsman only condones the risking of one life to save another_.

Things begin to click faster than he knows what to do with them.

_The net in the gorge._

_The bombs that stopped at zero._

_Why specifically tell me the gun was loaded, unless…?_

_The danger was never real. All this time, it was never real. We were only meant to think it was_.

Martin isn’t asking mindless obedience. Kingsman aren’t killing machines, and they don’t seek them. They don’t want them.

Martin’s asking for comprehension. He’s asking whether Harry’s understood.

Harry bolts to his feet, hands quivering. He has to do it before his nerve fails him. He has to do it now. It has to be now.

His trembling aim rises. Then steadies, by force. Mr. Pickle’s amber eyes glint up at him from over the barrel. His revelation didn’t end his insides’ churn, and neither does that.

 _Please, please God, let me be right. Don’t let me hurt this dog. Please, I beg of you, don’t let me have gotten this wrong. Don’t let me be wrong_ …

He fires.

The pellet bounces off Mr. Pickle’s fur. He staggers backward with a whimper.

Nothing more.

The gun is on the ground and Harry’s dog is in his arms before he registers, even remotely, that the sound of his gunshot was doubled by the room across the way.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, sweetheart, did that nasty thing hit you?” Mr. Pickle is wriggling like mad, stretching to reach his face and lick every inch of it, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. Laughter bubbles out of him with tears, and it’s hard to tell which came first. “Oh, yes, I know. I know. I would never hurt you. I would never, _ever_ hurt you, Mr. Pickle. Not for all the money in the world. Not for a thing.”

Martin rises while Harry’s still pressing soothing kisses to Mr. Pickle’s scruff. After another half-dozen or so, he finally senses he should pay attention, and looks over in time to see Martin replace his weapon, straighten his jacket, and offer his hand.

It’s then that it happens. He’s unprepared to commit it to memory, but he’s going to anyway.

“Welcome,” says Martin, “to Kingsman. Agent Galahad.”

 _Welcome to Kingsman_.

Gently, Harry plops Mr. Pickle back to the floor. His eyes are full this time, and he makes no excuse for them. Reflex takes Martin’s hand for him. He barely feels his arm move.

 _Thank you, sir_. His brain sends the command to his mouth. “And Derrington…?” is what incredulously comes out instead.

_Please don’t let there be a chance of losing this. Don’t let there be an asterisk._

“Shot the dog, too,” Martin says, pumping his hand. Harry’s heart nearly stops, and so does the handshake. It’s Martin’s look that saves it. “Then thought the blank must be some mistake. Tried to take Geraint’s sidepiece and finish the job. I hear Molly bit him. No one stopped her, either. He’ll be on his way home once the dart wears off.”

Harry exhales so heavily his lungs might as well be raisins. Never in his life has he been so grateful a human being turned out to be that depraved.

“You’ve done it, Harry,” Martin confirms with a grin. “We all knew you could. Your mother will be extraordinarily proud.”

 _Mother_ … He’s got to phone her. He’s got to get to a telephone. He’s got to…

_No, not yet. Not yet._

_There was a second gunshot_.

He grabs his mentor’s hand again, rattling away at his elbow like a lineman in a lever factory. “Thank you, sir. Thank you, I’m honored. I… May I be excused?”

There’s something knowing in Martin’s expression, and he nods. “Go on.”

Scooping up Mr. Pickle, Harry all but throws open the door. The one on the other side is already open, framing Lancelot again, only this time, smiling in the background. Hamish is already charging to the middle of the drawing room.

Grinning ear-to-ear.

“William?” Harry demands.

“Couldn’t do it; Kay sent him home.”

“Ainsley?”

“She’s all right.”

If there’s anything his memory allows him to keep about this day, anything that holds its clarity instead of fading to the blur of awe and adrenaline, Harry wants it to be this. The moment that he extends his hand again, this time brimming with the glee of a ten-year-old boy, standing tall in a Kingsman agent’s shoes.

“It’s an honor to be working with you, Merlin.”

No one else knows the relief on his friend’s face like he does. Hamish shakes, blinking back tears of his own. “And with you, Agent Galahad.”

“Agent Galahad!”

There’s no parrot in the room. It’s Martin again, emerging from the parlor holding a sheet of fax paper, radiating alarm.

“Don’t get comfortable. I’m going to need backup. Come with me. Your suit’s on the plane.”

“Merlin, to the control room, quickly. Arthur will meet you there,” Lancelot orders.

There’s only time for a sharp nod each, and Hamish claps Harry’s shoulder. Then the two of them are off down the corridors, scored by the sound of a piped-in radio broadcast.

 _For those of you just tuning in, the date is Wednesday, twenty-nine July, and what a beautifully clear morning for the wedding of the centur_ _y_ …

 


	9. Save Margaret Thatcher

No one ever told them whereabouts in England the compound was located, despite how long it’s been their address. It was always shuttle here, shuttle there. Clearly it’s far enough from London to justify a plane ride, albeit a very short one.

They forfeit their altitude just as Harry emerges from the quarters in the back, clad tie-to-toe in Simons’s finished product. Every seam is flawless, as if he were born in it. His chest swells as he examines the mirror. Not only does he look his new part, but feels every bit of it, too.

Except for one thing. “Here,” Martin says, approaching with a small case in hand. “Put these on. And don’t ever be without them. They cost the devil’s own fucking ransom to replace.”

Harry takes the case, opening it carefully. Inside is a pair of glasses, these in dark tortoiseshell, in same style he’s seen all the agents wearing. Up to now, he’s just assumed they all had cataract problems.

A monumentally stupid assumption, he realizes, the moment he slides them on.

The whole world is enhanced. He’d thought his vision was already twenty-twenty, but through these eyes, he second-guesses everything he knows. The picture is sharper than any television—or reality, for that matter—is capable of. When he faces Martin, a green mess of boxy digits appears, framing him in binary code that rearranges into statistics. _MARTIN TURNER. ALIAS: LAMORAK. 54. FRIENDLY_. He blinks, and they pixelate, then disappear.

“These are the new model,” Martin says. “They’ll identify anyone they recognize, mark the rest as possible hostiles, and broadcast video directly to the control room. Calendar and calculator functions, too. And a crap version of Pac-Man. Engineers had a bit of a laugh with that one, I think.”

The cabin lights dim, signaling descent. Pulled from his astonishment, Harry pounces on one of the windows. There’s nowhere to land, nothing but city below, full of police barriers and teeming crowds hoisting homemade signs, congratulating Prince Charles and Lady Spencer. Every Englishman knows what day it is, except, apparently, for the pilot.

“Should we be concerned?” he asks Lamorak. It’s dialed back a bit, at that.

A good call on Harry’s part. Lamorak smiles. “You’ll see.”

Flying low, the plane does a loop, away from the path of the paparazzi’s helicopters. Half a mile away from the chaos in general, if not more. They make a pass above a dead-end road, blocked off to all traffic, between two commercial buildings with ‘CLOSED’ in nearly every window. ‘FOR LEASE’ in some.

When they pass again, the street itself opens like a mailing box.

Harry watches, enrapt, as they ease down the ‘runway’ and into the earth, then gives his mentor an impressed eyebrow. “No, I wouldn’t say concern is necessary.”

“I didn’t think so.”

They disembark into an underground hangar, identified only by a single circle-K beneath the plane. Markings on the mildewed walls identify this place as a now-defunct bomb shelter, left over from the second World War. It’s a long, continuous tunnel toward the center of the city, running directly parallel to the route the royal motorcade’s soon to take. Several more branch off down the way.

“You’d think there ought to be a police presence down here,” Harry remarks.

“There would be, I’m sure, if anyone knew about it. You’d be amazed the schematics you can vanish from city records with a little ingenuity.”

“And gadgetry.”

“That too.”

It’s a long walk ahead, and they keep up the pace. Lamorak stops only once, a minute or so in, leaning one-handed against a wall to pull something from the heel of his shoe. A spiral cord follows. It’s a phone. A fucking phone, for God’s sake. He’d left that one out on the tour.

“The glasses are a two-way radio as well, but there’s fuck-all reception down here,” he explains as it rings. Then someone picks up. “This is Lamorak. Landing secured. Approaching target now. Is the way clear?”

Harry knows the answer without needing to overhear it.

Largely because it’s speeding toward them on motorcycles.

“Oh, fucking bollocks.” The phone clatters to the cement as Lamorak grips his umbrella. “Shield up, Galahad!”

He’s on it before the words have even left his mentor’s mouth, raising the cane like a rifle and deploying the canopy. A greenish disc displays their assailants as if in night vision, slaloming to dodge the spray of bullets from Lamorak’s weapon. Harry joins the fire, and the motorists deflect that too.

“Don’t turn your back to them!”

It’s impossible; the three bikes fan out before they can take any cover, circling like vultures, making caged birds of the Kingsman. Lamorak only manages to take out one before another yells in Russian, and whirling his spent shotgun, catches Lamorak upside the head. He drops like a sack of flour.

“ _Shit!_ ”

A second biker skids into the wall before Harry knows it was his bullet’s doing. The third, he catches on the next go, blasting him clean away from the beast he rode in on.

He drops to his knees beside Agent Lamorak, pressing two fingers beneath the left side of his collar. Then he scrambles for the dropped phone.

“Is anyone there?” _Fuck’s sake, tell me someone’s there. Now would be a wonderful time for someone to be there!_ “This is Galahad; can anyone hear me? Lamorak’s been decommissioned, but he’s alive. We’ve been ambushed by hostiles, three of them, of unconfirmed origin, though one of them spoke Russian. Hello?”

If anything, he expects to hear Arthur. Or static, if he’s particularly unlucky.

What he hears instead is Hamish, panicked.

“ _Galahad, we’ve got a problem_.”

_Oh, have we? Do tell! I was just hoping for a problem!_

“What’s going on?” Harry barks, eyes vigilant around the tunnel. “How the hell did Arthur miss those incomings?”

“ _He’s unconscious, that’s how_.”

 _Oh, wonderful, that’s it, keep them coming! One isn’t near exciting enough!_ “What do you mean ‘he’s unconscious?’ Has someone infiltrated us?”

“ _No, there’s no breach. I found him on the ground when I got here. When I checked his pulse I found a medical ID. He’s fucking diabetic. I’ve called for help but Lancelot’s just left on assignment—everyone’s on assignment. I don’t think there’s anyone left in the whole compound but me_.”

_Well, then that’s going to have to be enough, isn’t it? I could do far worse._

_Wish me luck, mother_.

“We’re going to have to do this alone.” Harry fleetingly evaluates the three crashed motorbikes and picks the one least damaged—so not the one in flames, then—tilting it upright by the handlebars, swinging a leg over the side. There’s a gun holster on the panel that he co-opts for his umbrella. Meantime, in keeping the phone to his ear, he’s taken Lamorak’s shoe with him. He’d like a word with whomever depicted this job to be glamorous.

He tests the engine with a few revs over Hamish’s protests, partly because there’s little time, and partly because his friend sounds like this is the worst idea he’s ever heard, and that sort of negativity isn’t helpful at the moment. “ _You don’t even know the objective, Galahad. You don’t know who you’re looking for. And I’m not authorized to make any call yet without Arthur’s consent. We’ve got to stand down and wait for a senior agent_.”

‘Stand down’ translates to ‘kickstand up.’ His hearing’s always been peculiar that way. “There isn’t time. Are you going to help me or not?”

The wait is under half a second, ended by the sound of some material object in motion. Harry knows it marks the donning of Merlin’s headset.

“ _Go_.”

He’s off. The bike swerves beneath him as he rockets through the tunnel, unused to its carriage, making him hunch against inertia. His attempt to change the gear turns on the radio instead.

_The winner takes it all_   
_The loser has to fall_   
_It’s simple and it’s plain_   
_Why should I complain?_

“ _I’m in, I’ve found Agent Lamorak’s file_ ,” Merlin shouts over the noise. “ _Take a right! Now!_ ”

Harry barely manages to bank over without becoming a fascinating stain on the concrete.

“ _Two ahead, incoming!_ ”

Up goes the Rainmaker. Four one-handed shots pick off the hostiles, sending vehicles tumbling. He rides an S curve around the wreckage.

“In case it’s on the agenda, a hint as to what the devil I’m doing would be marvelous about now!”

“ _It’s Margaret Thatcher_.”

“I _sincerely_ hope that came out wrong!”

“ _No—I mean, yes. She’s a guest at the wedding. Some vigilante offshoot of the KGB’s got plans to kill her the moment she arrives. They’re trying to start a war proper_.”

He can’t spare the energy to hold his tongue at the moment. “By assassinating Margaret Thatcher? Wouldn’t Charles and Diana make more sense as targets, considering they’re actually liked?”

“ _They’re more heavily protected—look, the next time I take afternoon tea with Soviet renegades, I’ll ask, all right? Take a left!_ ”

This time the bike curves obediently. It’s a relief he’s got the hang of it, at least until he sees what’s ahead.

Double doors of solid steel.

“Merlin, I can’t get through.” He races to scan. There’s no padlock, no keypad, no access point. “Open the doors. You can do that, right?”

“ _Hang on, I’ve got to unscramble the access code_.”

Harry tries everything, but can’t get the bike to brake. There’s no room to either side to turn around. “Merlin, nothing’s happening. I can’t possibly oversell the urgency of the situation.”

“ _Will you give me a fucking minute?_ ”

“I haven’t got a fucking minute to give!” he panics. “For the love of God, you have to–”

The doors pull apart just in time to slide unscathed through the opening.

“ _You’ve reached your destination_.”

 _Now_ the brakes work. Harry unsticks them with a slam of his heel, pivoting to a clean stop, and turns down the kickstand, clearing his throat. “Fine timing, thank you.”

“ _You’re welcome_.”

“And I’d just like to say you’re doing wonderfully so far, by the way.”

“ _Save it for headquarters, get a move on_.”

“Right.”

The sound of ABBA recedes in his wake as Harry moves away from the motorbike, expanding the Rainmaker again, Lamorak’s shoe-phone wedged between his ear and shoulder. He moves ahead with caution, eyes shifting to all sides.

“ _Switch the glasses to thermal. There’s a setting for that_ ,” Merlin says. “ _Turn the dial in the frame below the right lens. Two clicks counter-clockwise_.”

One click paints his vision all in technicolor. The next reveals sketchy red blobs of humanoid shape around the upcoming corner. Four of them. In poses that give away machine guns.

“ _Do you need an alternate route?_ ”

This, he can handle without question. “Ask me again in a moment.”

Digging into his pocket, he comes up with a gold lighter. His thumb flicks the cap. Rearing his arm back, he pitches.

The explosion from the next room is a cluster of crimson through his lenses. When it dissipates, there’s none left whatsoever.

“ _Nicely done_ ,” Merlin commends as Harry switches modes back.

“All in the written test.”

There’s no point in asking where to go from here. It’s obvious. The only way out of this room is a lift, just ahead at his ten o’clock. Harry hurries for it, closing his umbrella, praying to no particular god that he’s still on Lamorak’s schedule. Or, if not, that at least no one will be dead by the time he catches up. Lamorak and Arthur included.

“Is there any code?”

“ _Not that I’m seeing, no. It should op–_ ”

It opens with a fist to Harry’s jaw. His glasses skew; Lamorak’s phone goes scattering across the floor. He stumbles backward. A second hit draws blood.

It’s the moment he’s grabbed by the lapels that his reflexes decide he’s bloody through with this.

Bashing the Rainmaker upward breaks his attacker’s hold. Then it breaks his teeth in. Both of them grappling for it, they stagger into the lift, closing the doors. It starts to move.

A sudden hefty twist of the cane rips at his arms; his back goes slamming into the wall, feet wrenched from under him. The ringing in his ears picks up tin music from the overhead speaker.

_Crack that whip_   
_Give the past the slip_   
_Step on a crack_   
_Break your momma’s back_

He’s up in time to dodge a kick to the abdomen, rounding on his attacker as the steel-toed boot _gongs_ into the baseboard. A clutch of the man’s ear threatens to tear it off as Harry throws him to the floor. A leg sweep brings Harry down alongside.

“ _Harry!_ ” It comes from his glasses. They must be aboveground.

Answering would spend the breath he needs; it goes to a snap-roll instead. On his feet, he digs the Rainmaker’s point into the enemy’s chest, opening to keep him down, then firing. A burst of blood fills the umbrella’s screen just in time for a gentle _ding_ from the lift’s floor indicator.

“Just a bit of trouble,” he says to Merlin, heart pounding. “Hardly worth mentioning.”

“ _No time to rest,_ ” Merlin warns. _“I count five on the rooftop. Lamorak’s intel says they’ll be dressed like Scotland Yard, but that’s them. They’re the snipers_.”

 _Five of them, Jesus Christ_. Harry fights his breathing into check. “Anything you can do to level the playing field?”

“ _Not from here_.” Then, just as quickly, Merlin corrects himself, rapid clacking filling the background. “ _There’s one thing I can try, but I dunno if it’ll work. There’s a powered circulation vent on the roof_.”

“What can you do with that?”

A few more clacks come over the line, the last more decisive than the rest. From outside the lift, Harry hears the erratic zapping noise of an electrical surge, accompanied by the very distinct screams of two men. Then two _whumps_ of collapse.

“ _Oh, not much_.” The smirk in Merlin’s voice is plain to hear. “ _How’s three against one sound?_ ”

His jaw aches behind the smile that’s drawing on.

“Manageable.”

The lift doors slide open. One more time, Harry raises the Rainmaker to aim level, deployed at the ready. He creeps with careful sideways steps around the cover of a rooftop heating unit. Sounds of celebration float up from the streets below, hollering, whooping and cheering, and his peripheral vision catches the flutter of multicolored confetti. The crowd begins to sing “God Save the Queen.”

“ _Oh, shit—Galahad, the car’s approaching now_.” The alarm has returned to Merlin’s voice. “ _I’m looking at the paparazzi’s video feed right now; that’s her license plate. She’s in that car. You’ve got no time at all_.”

The thermal function of his glasses re-activates with the touch of a thumb. He’s not sure how it happened, but every bone in his body is perfectly calm.

“ _Harry, it’s_ got _to be now!_ ”

The red shapes that had flocked to their electrocuted friends begin to fan out. Two headed for the street-facing corners of the rooftop. The third moving backward, posing himself as a lookout.

No one notices when the third man disappears, dragged from the top of the unit with Harry’s tie around his throat. A twist of his chin, and his dead weight drops to the asphalt.

“ _They’re in position!_ ”

Harry edges his way silently around the heating unit, sights set. His first shot lands square in the back of the nearest gunman, crumpling him in place.

He turns to take aim at the second.

Who’s nowhere to be found.

The crack of a rifle butt comes down across the back of his head. All at once his body gives out underneath him. He collapses like a ragdoll.

“Who the fuck have we here?”

The words filter blearily into Harry’s throbbing head. Another gruff Russian accent.

“ _Harry? Harry! What’s going on?_ ”

Blinking away spots, he manages to turn himself over, glaring murder at the man with a rifle now pointed at his skull. He’s squinting down from under a portly brow, leaning slightly forward, inspecting Harry like a maggot in a pile of shit.

“Looks like some kind of dandy to me.”

The throngs still sing. “ _Oh, Lord, our God, arise;_ ”

Below, the sound of engines is a block away, if that.

“ _Scatter her enemies;_ ”

“How come you choose today to die, dandy-boy?”

“ _And make them fall…_ ”

Bloody-lipped, Harry peels into a wicked grin.

“Actually, if it’s all the same to you, I was hoping _you’d_ tell _me_.”

A flip of his ankles, one over the other, catches the man off-balance. He goes pitching to the side, arms pinwheeling in midair for a grasp that never comes, aim forgotten. Then a swift final kick sends him toppling over the rooftop’s edge, his short scream ending with a _crack_ and a _bang_ in the alleyway below.

Almost frantically, Harry crawls to the edge, peering over. The limp Russian lies at the bottom of a rusted dumpster, eyes open, blood pooled beneath his bloated head.

He looks left toward the motorcade route in time to see Margaret Thatcher, accompanied by aides, wave her way into St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Only then does he flatten to his back, heaving a sigh to end them all.

“ _Fucking spectacular!_ ” Harry chuffs out a haggard laugh when he hears it. He’d almost forgotten Hamish was on the line. “ _Well done, Harry! Well done_ Galahad.”

It’s incredibly likely he’s not catching his breath for weeks after this. “And you,” he tells his friend, wiping blood away from his lip. “Anything on Arthur?”

“ _The medics are here to help him now. He’s gonna be all right. And we’ve got transport on the way for Lamorak as well_.”

_All’s well that ends well._

“ _My turn to ask you a question?_ ” Hamish queries.

He’s exhausted enough to let fair play win. “I don’t see why not.”

“ _How fucking hard is that head of yours?_ ”

This time, there’s considerably more strength in Harry’s laugh.

“Very, I’ve been told.”

 


	10. Epilogue (Fall Out)

Simons redundantly proves his worth as headtailor when Harry finds a box waiting for him upon return. It’s a second tie, a clone of the one he’d garroted the Russian with.

 _Let’s do hope this one lasts longer than a day, sir_ , says the note enclosed. _Fondly, -S_.

Harry smiles. He’s not sure he can promise it won’t be a habit.

Then again, he’ll be here quite long enough to find out.

Debriefs, so they’re told, typically take place in the dining room. Today, in deference to Arthur’s health, they report to the infirmary instead. An unconscious Lamorak nurses his concussion in the bed adjacent, monitors beeping steadily that all else is well, while Arthur sits upright in his own, setting aside an empty cup of pudding on his bedside tray.

“Two bloody hours,” he says. “Two bloody hours, and the two of you have already managed to completely defy every convention of order upon which the Kingsman operation depends.”

Standing at attention before him, arms folded behind their backs, Harry and Hamish trade a glance. _This can’t possibly be a reprimand, don’t you think?_

Arthur smiles. “Bravo.”

 _Ah, there, you see? I didn’t think so either_.

Their new boss looks to Hamish first. “Merlin.” Harry is aware without looking of his friend’s immediate snap in posture, no matter how straight it already was. “I am quite impressed with your conduct this morning. Both in my own assistance and the navigation of Galahad’s mission. Three people are alive today because of your quick work. That’s something to be very proud of.”

He is. Harry can tell. He steals a peek, and the quiet way it radiates from the lad is unmistakable. It might be the most chuffed he’s been in his lifetime. It’s good to see.

“Thank you, sir.”

 _Your aunt would be proud as well_ , Harry thinks, making a mental note to tell him later.

Then Arthur’s focus is on him. “Agent Galahad.” He straightens extra in the same way, defiant of his injuries with pride. “You saw to the completion of your fellow agent’s objective, despite all reason to the contrary, and eliminated no fewer than a dozen immediate threats to not only national security, but the continued peace of the developed world. I had a feeling you were going to be a pain in my arse, frankly, and that you may yet turn out to be… But you should know that you have proven yourself as much a Kingsman as any who’ve come before you.”

It’s more than he anticipated. More than he ever could’ve dreamt. He hopes the brimming of his eyes won’t be held against him.

“Thank you, sir,” he somehow manages at an audible volume. “I’m honored.”

_You can’t possibly know how much._

Arthur levels his best authoritative gaze on them both. “Now. Since you’ve proven yourselves so capable, rest up. Tomorrow you’re to meet me in the dining room at oh-nine-hundred sharp. We will discuss your next assignment.”

Breaking into an insuppressible grin, Harry looks at Hamish, finding him returning the same.

_And so begins the adventure._

“Fall out.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've followed this since I started posting it, or if you're just now finding it and read it all in one sitting, I see those hits and I appreciate every last one of you, my dudes. (If neither of those things...well, there's not, like, a TL;DR down here, so...weird time to skip to the end notes, but hey, you do you.)
> 
> If you loved it, I'd love your comments, and be sure to check out the rest of the series. Thanks all.


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